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ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA 



LETTERS 

From the Twelfth Vermont Regiment and 
Personal Experiences op Volunteer 
Service in the War for the Union, 
1862-63 



BY 



/ 

GEORGE GRENVILIvE BENEDICT 

Private and Lieutenant Twelfth Regiment 
Vermont Volunteers and Aide-de-Camp 
upon the Staff of the Second Vermont 
Brigade 



-vf~ 



BURLINGTON : 
FREE PRESS ASSOCIATION. 

1895. 



998(i 



TO MY 

Comrades Living and Dead 

OF THE 

Twelfth Regiment Vermont Volunteers 



i 



PREFACE. 

The letters collected in this little volume are 
taken from the columns of the Burlington (Vt.) 
Free Press, to which paper they were written by 
its then junior editor. 

Describing scenes in army life, sketched currente 
calamo as they passed before the eye of the writer, 
with no attempt at writing history and contain- 
ing little of "blood and thunder," it is not sup- 
posed that they will have much interest for the 
general reader ; nor would they be now re- 
printed except in compliance with repeated 
requests from a number of my army com- 
rades who have expressed a desire to preserve in 
permanent form what happened to be almost the 
only record published at the time (though but 
a fragmentary and imperfect one) of the service 
of the regiment to which they belonged. It was 
a service at best comparatively uneventful, and it 
is now, after over thirty years of peace, passing 
into oblivion for most of those who were not directly 
connected with it. For those who shared it, how- 
ever, these letters seem still to have interest, and 
such as they are they are submitted in their pres- 
ent shape without further apology. 

G. G. B. 

Burlington, October, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGES. 

Letters I to IV— Rendezvous at Brattleboro ; 
Equipment and Inspection ; Drill and 
Reviews; Off for Washington 1 to 19 

Letters V to IX — In Camp at the Capital ; 
Reviews and Battalion Drill ; A Washing- 
ton Dust Storm ; Organization of the 
Second Vermont Brigade - 19 to 43 

Letters X to XV— Ordered into Virginia ; Life 
at Camp Vermont ; Thanksgiving Day in 
Camp - 43 to 85 

Letters XVI to XIX— Brigade Moves to Fair- 
fax ; Picket Duty on Cub Run ; Christmas 
in Camp ; Stuart's Raid and Repulse 85 to 110 

Letters XX to XXIII— The New Year, 1863; 
Return after a Furlough ; In Camp at 
Wolf Run Shoals ; Virginia Snow Storms ; 
Capture of General Stoughton 110 to 125 

Letters XXIV to XXIX— Staff Duty at Brig- 
ade Headquarters ; General Stannard as- 
sumes Command ; Guarding the O. & A. 
Railroad ; Cavalry Skirmish at Warrenton 
Junction; Visit to Bull Run Battle-ground .126 to 158 

Letters XXX and XXXI— The Battle of Gettys- 
burg ; Disbanding of the Second Vermont 
Brigade ; Farewell to Army Life 159 to 194 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Private G. G . Benedict Opposite page 4 

Field and Staff Officers of the Twelfth 

Vermont " " 30 

Camp at Wolf Run Shoals, Virginia... " " 114 

Stockaded Tents, Camp of Twelfth Ver- 
mont Volunteers . " " 134 

General George J. Stannard " " 140 

Stannard's Brigade at Gettysburg li " 178 



FROM THE TWELFTH REGIMENT. 



Rendezvous at Bratteeboro — First Guard 
Duty. 

In Camp, Brattleboro, Sept. 26, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

This correspondence must begin a little back 
of the natural starting point of our leaving Bur- 
lington. The uppermost thing in my mind, as I 
write, is a sense of the kindly interest in the 
Howard Guard,* on the part of the citizens of 
Burlington, shown by the concourse which 
crowded the Town Hall on Wednesday evening 
to give emphasis to our sword presentation to our 
worthy captain; by the kind sentiments expressed 
and the hearty God bless you's uttered there 
and then ; and by what seemed to us the turn out 
en masse of the town of Burlington to see us off 

*The regiment consisted of ten companies of Vermont Militia, 
reorganized under Pres. Lincoln's call of August 4,1862, for 300 000 
militia to serve for nine mouths. The Burlington Company had 
been known in the State Militia as the Howard Guard. The Compa- 
ny had in its ranks twelve men of collegiate education, and other 
substantial citizens who had not felt able to leave their business or 
professions for three years, but were glad to enlist for a shorter term; 
and the regiment as a whole was largely composed of such citizens. 



*Z ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

the next morning. Those demonstrations touched 
every man in the Guard, and will not soon be 
forgotten by them. It was an unfortunate thing 
for us, that our departure was so hasty as to 
deprive most of us of the opportunity of giving the 
final hand-shake to our friends. 

Our ride to Brattleboro was a pleasant one. 
We were joined at Brandon by the Brandon com- 
pany, at Rutland by the Rutland company, and 
at Bellows Falls by the long train with the 
remainder of the regiment. At every station, the 
people seemed to be out in multitudes, and from 
the doors and windows of every farm-house on 
the way the handkerchiefs were fluttering. 
These nine mouths regiments appear to be objects 
of especial interest on the part of the citizens of 
Vermont, and I trust they will fulfil the expecta- 
tions of their friends. I am told that the arrival 
of a whole regiment, in camp, on the day set, is 
.something unprecedented here. 

We reached Brattleboro about half-past four 
o'clock. The regiment had a dusty march 
enough to camp, where, after considerable exer- 
tion on the part of Col. Blunt, it was finally 
formed into line, in front of the barracks. The 
companies are, most of them, deficient in drill, 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 6 

and the men have in fact, about everything to 
learn. They did, however, finally get into line 
parallel with the barracks without having the 
line of buildings moved to correspond with the 
line of men, which for a time appeared to be the 
only way in which any kind of parallelism could 
be established between the two. The companies 
are composed for the most part, however, of men 
who will learn quickly, and a few days of steady 
drill will tell another story. We broke ranks 
just at dark, received our blankets, woolen and 
india-rubber, selected our bunks, and marched off 
to supper, which was abundant and good enough 
for anybody, sauced as it was with a hearty ap- 
petite. 

The barracks are houses of plain boards, ten 
in number, within which wooden bunks are 
ranged for the men, in double tiers. I cannot 
speak from experience, as yet, as to their comfort, 
your humble servant having been among the for- 
tunate individuals who, constituting the first 
eight (alphabetically) of the company, were the 
first detailed for guard duty. This I found to 
mean a couple of hours of such rest as could be 
extracted from the soft side of a hemlock plank 
in the guard house, with sergeants and corporals 



4 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

and "reliefs" coming in and going out, and 
always in interested conversation when not in 
active motion ; then two hours (from n to 1) of 
pacing a sentry beat, musket on shoulder, over 
what by this time is a path, but then was an 
imaginary, and in the darkness, uncertain, line on 
the dew-soaked grass of the meadow ; then about 
three hours more of that "rest" I have alluded 
to, but this time I found the plank decidedly 
softer, and slept in spite of the trifling drawbacks 
mentioned ; then two hours more of sentry 
duty ; and then — volunteers having been called 
for for special guard duty — two hours more of 
the same. By this time it was w 7 ell into the 
morning. 

On the whole it was quite a night, for the first 
one in camp. I rather liked it. To be sure, if 
the only proper business of the night be sleeping, 
it was not as successful a piece of business in that 
way as could be conceived of, but I flatter myself 
that it was a successful effort at guard duty. Not 
a rebel broke in, nor a roving volunteer broke out, 
over my share of the line, and if there was no 
sleeping there was a good deal of other things. 
There was, for instance, a fine opportunity for 
the study of astronomy; ditto, for meditation. I 




PRIVATE G. G. BENEDICT, 

12TH VERMONT VOLS. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. O 

read in the bright planets success for the good 
cause, and glory for the Twelfth Vermont, and 
mused — on what not. This was one of the finest 
opportunities to see the Connecticut valley mist 
rise from the river and steal over the meadows, 
giving a shadowy veil to the trees, a halo apiece 
to the stars, and adding to the stature of my 
comrade sentinels till they loomed like Goliaths of 
Gath through the fog-cloud. There was also the 
opportunity to see the morning break, not with 
the grand crash of bright sunrise, but cushioned 
and shaded by that same fog-bank, till the break 
was of the softest and most gradual. Who will 
say that these are not compensations, and who 
wouldn't be a soldier ? 

To-day the regiment is doing nothing but settle 
itself in its quarters. If it does anything worth 
telling, I shall try to tell it to you. B. 



II. 

Equipment and Inspection. 

Camp Lincoln, 
Brattleboro, Sept. 30, 1862. 
Dear Free Press : 

Maj . Austine is expected here on Friday morn- 
ing next, to muster in the Twelfth, which he will 



6 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

do on that day, provided the overcoats and 
other equipments shall have arrived. It is the 
intention of Adjutant-General Washburn not to 
let the regiment pass out of his hands until it is 
fully equipped throughout. The quality of the 
articles thus far furnished us by Quartermaster 
General Davis, is a guaranty that our fit-out 
will be of the best. With our arms we are espe- 
cially pleased. They are the Springfield rifle of 
1862 — the best arm in the world, light, strong, 
well-balanced. The overcoats, belts, cartridge 
boxes and knapsacks remain to be furnished. I 
understand that they are on the way from New 
York. 

It has been found impossible to procure "A" 
tents, and the regiment will be supplied on its 
arrival at Washington with the little "shelter 
tents," so-called, which are packed and carried 
on the shoulders of the men on the march. 

The physical inspection of our company took 
place yesterday, conducted by Brigade Surgeon 
Phelps. The men, as you probably know, undergo 
the examination in pur is naturalibtis , in squads of 
about twenty at a time, and are required to march, 
kick, throw about their arms, etc., in a way 
which, under the sharp eye of Dr. Phelps, soon 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. I 

discloses any stiffness or disability. In conjunc- 
tion with the very close individual inspection 
instituted at the time of enlistment it makes a 
pretty thorough piece of work. There was found 
to be but one of our company with regard to 
whom there was any doubt as to his physical fit- 
ness for a soldier's duties — and he will probably 
pass. About a baker's dozen of the whole regi- 
ment have been inspected out — showing a remark- 
ably high average of health and condition. In 
fact Dr. Phelps remarked in my hearing that he 
had never inspected a regiment in which he found 
so few who must be thrown out. 

Yours, B. 



III. 

Knapsack Drill and Review. 

Camp Lincoln, 
Brattleboro, Oct. 4, i86_>. 

Dear Free Press : 

An order was read at dress parade Thursday 
night, announcing the appointment of Col. E. H. 
Stoughton, of the Fourth Vermont, to the posi- 
tion of Commandant of this Post, and his assump- 
tion of the duties of the station. He has estab- 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

lished his headquarters just outside the grounds, 
and it is understood will proceed actively with the 
work of disciplining these five regiments. 

The overcoats, knapsacks, belts, cartridge 
boxes and haversacks were distributed yesterday 
morning, completing our equipment. The articles 
seem to be very good, with the exception, per- 
haps, of the knapsacks and haversacks, which 
might be better without injury to the service or 
to the feelings of the troops. They are, however, 

1 suppose, the best that could be procured. The 
whole form an amount of harness which strikes 
the unsophisticated recruit with a slight feeling 
of dismay. Is it possible, he says to himself, that 
all this pile of traps is only my share, and is all 
to be carried on my devoted shoulders ? Why 
have they made them all so heavy ? What earthly 
reason now, for cutting these straps out of such 
an almighty thick side of harness leather, and 
making them so broad, too ? However, we took 
them all, and were, I trust, duly thankful for the 
same. 

Yesterdaj' afternoon was rendered memorable 
by our first knapsack drill. The orders were for 
a review of the regiment, fully equipped, with 
knapsacks packed. The overcoat was accord- 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. V 

ingly folded and placed within the knapsack; the 
change of underclothing, socks, etc., ditto; and 
the woolen blanket rolled tightly within the rub- 
ber blanket and then strapped on the top. The 
whole concern, with the straps, weighs on an 
average about thirty-five pounds, and there goes 
science, let me tell you, to the production of a 
skillfully packed knapsack. 

The review was considered, I am told, quite a 
fine affair by the numerous array of spectators. 
Let me endeavor to give you an inside view of the 
affair, as it seemed to one in the ranks. We of 
the rank and file did not think it so fine. At 
two o'clock, then, each private hoisted on to his 
shoulders his knapsack, packed as above, slung 
around him his haversack and canteen, buckled 
on his cartridge-box and shoulder-belt, and 
musket in hand, took his place in the ranks. The 
sun has come out hot. About fifteen minutes of 
waiting takes place before moving into line, in 
the course of which the luckless volunteer becomes 
distinctly conscious of a weight on his back. He 
straightens up manfully, however, and endeavors, 
when the order comes, to step out with his custom- 
ary light step. But that, he finds, is not quite so 
easy. He is logy. He weighed 145 pounds half an 



10 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

hour ago, now he weighs 190. That knapsack 
gives an undue momentum to his about-face, and 
bumps uncomfortably against his neighbor's as he 
faces from file to front. But we are in line now. 
The captain, astonished at the unwonted clumsi- 
ness of his men, labors hard, but with only mod- 
erate success, to "dress" them into a straight 
line, and there we stand, arms at shoulder. 
There is drumming and fifing and stepping into 
place of officers; but 3^011 notice little of what is 
going on. Your attention is mainly directed to a 
spot between your shoulder blades, which feels 
peculiarly. In short it aches. The sensation 
gradually spreads through your back and shoul- 
ders, and is complicated with a sense of suffoca- 
tion from the pressure of the straps across the 
chest. The perspiration bursts from every pore. 
You hear a groan from your comrade on the left, 
and are comforted to know that you have com- 
pany in your misery; but it is a poor consolation. 
Your knapsack is evidently growiyig both in size 
and weight. It felt heavy before; now it weighs 
on you like a thousand of brick. You cease to 
wonder at the breadth and thickness of the straps 
which support it, — any thing less strong would 
snap with the tension of such a weight. You 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 11 

haven't been in the habit thus far, of considering 
it a desirable thing to be detailed for guard duty ; 
but you now find yourself looking off at the 
sentries pacing to and fro with only their muskets 
to carry, and you wish you were on guard to-day. 
And now you are conscious of a sharp pain in the 
hollow of your right arm, from holding your 
musket at the shoulder for three-quarters of an 
hour. Why can't they let us order arms for five 
minutes ? But instead comes the order to wheel 
into platoons, and around the grounds we are 
marched for a weary hour. We don't march 
good. We don't "right dress" and "left dress" 
good, we don't "wheel" good, and we don't feel 
good; but somehow or other we get through with 
it — though a few of the weaker or ailing ones 
drop out of the ranks — and we are still alive when 
marched to quarters and allowed to break ranks. 
It feels better now that it is done aching; but 
there are some of us who express the deliberate 
opinion, that with all the need of drill and tough- 
ening for our work, two hours of knapsack drill 
on a hot afternoon, was a pretty steep dose for 
raw recruits, the very first time. We shall all 
learn to like it in time, doubtless ; but like olives, 



12 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

tobacco and some other luxuries, one must get 
accustomed to it to really enjoy it. 

At the close of dress parade yesterday after- 
noon, we were drawn up in hollow square, and a 
presentation of a handsome sword to Col. Blunt, 
by the commissioned officers of the regiment, took 
place. The presentation speech was made by 
Chaplain Brastow, and was, I am told (we could 
not hear it) a very appropriate one. Col. Blunt 
responded in fitting terms. The sword is a beauti- 
ful one, of Ames' make, with two scabbards, one 
for field service, and the other richly gilt and 
chased. After this, a presentation of a pair of 
shoulder straps to Major Kingsley, by the Rut- 
land Light Guard, his former company, took 
place. 

We are to be mustered into the U. S. service, 
reviewed by the Governor, and inspected in full 
marching equipment by Adjt. Gen. Washburn 
to-day. It will be a busy and hard day. 

There is a camp rumor that the regiment is to 
go to New Orleans. 

October 5, 1862. 

The review by Gov. Holbrook and inspection 
3-esterday, was not as tedious as we expected. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 13 

One man of our company fainted and two or three 
fell out before it was over; but most of the men 
agreed that it was on the whole an easier job 
than that of the day before. For one, my knap- 
sack was sensibly less mountainous in size and 
weight, and my gun felt less like a six-pounder 
howitzer. I presume both will continue to 
decrease in ponderosity, as our muscles become 
habituated to the new pull on them. 

The regiment was mustered by companies into 
the U. S. service, in the afternoon, by Maj. 
Austine, who declared, after he had administered 
the oath of allegiance, that he felt proud of us. 
One man of the Bradford company declined to 
take the oath, but thought better of it shortly 
and begged the privilege of taking it, which w T as 
granted. Another man, of the Rutland company, 
also declined to take the oath, and stood to his 
refusal. What makes his case more singular is 
that he served in the First regiment, throughout 
its term of service, and was a good soldier. 

Yours, B. 



14 ARMY L1F-E IN VIRGINIA. 

IV. 

Off for Washington. 

Washington, Oct. 10, 1862. 
Dear Free Press : 

The camp of the Twelfth, at Brattleboro, pre- 
sented a busy appearance last Tuesday morning. 
The thousand operations preparator}- to breaking 
up of camp were in active progress. The quar- 
ters were full of friends of the soldiers, many 
of them ladies who were seated here and there 
and plying busy fingers in taking the last stitches 
for their brothers and friends, before bidding 
them a final good bye. The men were generally 
in good spirits, and anxious to be off. By eleven 
o'clock every knapsack was packed and the reg- 
iment in line, and at half-past eleven — the time 
set, to a minute — it marched from Camp Lincoln . 

The day was a very hot one, and the sun blazed 
down with midsummer power. The Thirteenth, 
Col. Randall, escorted the Twelfth to the railroad 
station. Col. Stoughton, commanding the post, 
took the head of the column , and in order to show 
the regiment to some of his Brattleboro friends, 
took it by a circuitous route through the streets to 
the station. The inarch of two miles in the hot 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 15 

sun was a pretty hard one for the boys; but in 
the little party of stragglers, perhaps twenty in* 
all, who fell .out on the way and brought 
up the rear, there was not a man of the 
Howard Guard. Through some misunderstand- 
ing or neglect on the part of the railroad com- 
panies, though the day and hour of our departure 
had been set for nearly a week, no cars were in 
readiness, and we had to wait until the}' were 
brought from below. The regiment was accord- 
ingly marched half a mile down the river to a 
shaded meadow and allowed to lie off for the 
remainder of the day. A barrel of good things, 
sent from Burlington by Mr. Beach, supplied our 
company with all they could eat and some to 
spare to the rest, and the afternoon passed com- 
fortably away. At six o'clock, a train of empty 
cars arrived, and the work of embarkation com- 
menced at seven. The cars were too few in num- 
ber, however, and some freight cars had to be 
rigged with seats manufactured on- the spot. I 
believe our officers considered themselves fortunate 
in not having to wait until cars and all were man- 
ufactured for the occasion. It was ten o'clock 
before we were fairly under way. Before this, 
our kind friends who had come to Brattleboro to 



16 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

see us off, had taken their leave, and the actual 
departure was as quiet as that of any train of 
thirty loaded cars could be. 

The delay in getting away was a fortunate 
thing for the men. Had they been packed into 
the cars as they came heated from the march, 
and compelled to ride all the remainder of that 
hot day, they would have suffered. As it was, 
they lay around in the shade during the after- 
noon and took the rail in the cool moonlight. 
The night was a splendid one, and the ride down 
the beautiful valley of the Connecticut, which 
seemed doubly beautiful in the liquid moon-light, 
was a notable one for every man who had a par- 
ticle of sentiment in his soul. 

At Springfield, Mass., where we arrived about 
one o'clock, we were received with a salute of 
fifty guns. On the supposition that we should 
arrive about supper time, preparations had also 
been made to supply refreshment to the troops ; 
but the delay upset the kind arrangement. We 
made little stop there or any where, but swept on 
down the river. We reached New Haven at 5 
o'clock, A. M., spent an hour in changing the 
men and the baggage from the cars to the "large 
and splendid" steamer Continental, and were off 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 17 

for New York. The boat barely touched at Peck 
Slip, and then went on to Jersey City, where we 
debarked about noon. Col. Howe* had provided 
soup and bread, which was served promptly, and 
we were off again by rail for Washington. 

I can give little time and space to the thousand 
times told story of the passage of a regiment from 
New York to Washington. We had the custom- 
ary wavings of handkerchiefs and flags, all along 
the way, and the usual — and it is all the more 
praise-worthy because it is usual — substantial 
welcome, in the shape of hot coffee, good bread 
and butter, and other substantiate, served by the 
kind hands of the ladies and gentlemen of the 
Union Relief Association, in Philadelphia. Up 
to our arrival at Baltimore we made steady and 
reasonably rapid progress, reaching there at six 
o'clock Thursday morning. Then came a march 
of a mile and a half across the city, and six hours 
of tedious standing with stacked arms, near the 
Washington depot, varied by breakfast at the 
Relief Rooms. Then we were stowed away in 
freight cars and started out of the city. The 
train took 600 other troops besides our regiment, 
and numbered thirty -four heavily loaded cars, the 

* The State Agent of Vermont at New York. 



18 AKMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

men covering the tops of the cars as well as filling 
them inside. We made slow progress, waiting 
three or four hours at Annapolis Junction, and 
reached Washington at 9 o'clock Thursday night. 
Supper was given us in the not sweet or savory 
halls of the "Soldiers' Rest," near the Capitol, 
and in the huge white-washed barns attached 
thereto, the boys finally laid themselves down to 
sleep as best they might, on the hard floors, many 
preferring to take their blankets and sleep on the 
ground outside. To-day we are to go into camp 
somewhere about Washington. 

The behavior of the regiment throughout the 
whole journey, elicited expressions of surprise and 
praise from the railroad and steamboat men and 
the citizens of every place at which we stopped. 
One of the managers of the Relief Association at 
Philadelphia said to me : "We have a good many 
regiments through here — thirteen this week, and 
-on an average two regiments a day, now-a-days 
— and I think I have never seen a regiment of a 
thousand such wiiversally well-behaved, orderly 
and gentlemanly men." 

I must close this hurried letter. Our company 
is all here to a man, and all are well. 

Yours, B. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 19 

V. 

In Camp at the Capitol. 

Camp on E. Capitol Hill, 
Washington, Oct. 12, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

The Twelfth left its temporary quarters at the 
Soldiers' Rest, on Friday at 11 o'clock, and 
moved to our present camp, something over a 
mile to the east of the Capitol. It is upon the 
wide, high, level plain called Capitol Hill. To 
the south of us, but hidden from our sight, runs 
the Eastern Branch of the Potomac, and across it 
are the Virginia heights, with four or five forts 
crowning the more prominent elevations. The 
ground on which we are encamped has but two 
or three trees in a square mile, and having been 
the site of numerous camps, is not overstocked 
with grass. Some of the men looked a little blank 
as they saw the bare, cheerless surface of Virginia 
clay on which they were to pitch their tents, and 
some blanker yet when they took in the length 
and breadth of the little strips of canvas which 
were to be our only shelter from sun and storm. 
The "shelter tent" is a couple of strips of 



20 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

light cotton duck, about five feet long and four 
feet wide, which button together at the top or 
ridgepole of the concern, is pitched by straining 
it over the muzzles of a couple of muskets set 
upright, and so forms a little shelter, with both 
ends open, under which two men ma)' huddle and 
sleep at night. A short man can be fairly covered 
by it ; a man of ordinary height must draw 
up his feet or let them stick outside. We got 
our little tents pitched by dark, and officers and 
men were by that time hungry enough to enjoy 
their supper of three hard army biscuit apiece, 
— there was no fuel to cook anything with, and our 
cooked rations had spoiled on the journey — and 
tired enough to drop off quickly to sleep, with but 
their blanket between them and the ground. Most 
of us, however, were waked at midnight by the 
rain driving into our little tabernacles. My bed- 
fellow turned out and hung rubber blankets so 
as to keep out the most of it from us, and we drop- 
ped to sleep again, to sleep soundly till morning. 
These are mere trifles of a soldier's every-day 
life ; but they are what many of your readers, 
who wish to know just how their boys are living 
while away, want to know about, and sol put 
them on paper. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 21 

Next day our colonel and quartermaster got 
the strings of red tape which hang around the 
various departments of supply, thoroughly pulled, 
and by two o'clock a train of a dozen army 
wagons came filing into camp with fuel, rations 
of good bread, beef, pork and potatoes, forage, 
and, last but not least, A tents. These were 
quickly made to take the place of the little shel- 
ters, and were viewed with intense satisfaction 
by the men. They are not the biggest things in 
the world — are in fact the simplest form of tent 
proper, wedge shaped and holding six men apiece 
lying closely side by side; but they are tents, and 
can be closed against the weather. When we take 
the field, we must take the others again. 

We shall now begin the work of active drill, 
and will soon, I trust, be in fighting order. 

We have already been visited by man}' of our 
friends of other regiments — by Quartermaster 
Dewey, Capt. Erhardt, Sergeant Morse and others 
of the First Vt. Cavalry, whose camp is across the 
river; by several from the Eleventh Vt., which is 
in camp about four miles away; by Lieut. Carey, 
of the 13th Mass., which fine regiment, once of 
1 100 men, has now 700 in hospital, sick and 
wounded, and is reduced by losses (in battle 



22 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

mainly) to 191 effective men; by Lieut. "Willie" 
Root, of the 226. Conn., which was in camp close 
by us yesterday, but to-day has struck tents and 
moved away to Chain Bridge; and by others, whose 
brown and hearty faces it was pleasant to see. 

We begin to realize that we are a part of the 
big arm}- of the Republic — and that a single reg- 
iment is but a little part of it. Camps surround 
us on ever}- side. Six thousand men, they say, 
came into Washington the day we did, and some 
come every day. They come, encamp, and dis- 
appear, the rest know not whither. Our thous- 
and is but one of a hundred thousand, and its 
best blood, — which will be given as freely as 
water, if need be — will be but a drop in the red 
tide which the demon of rebellion causes to flow. 

What can be done for any regiment our colonel 
will do for this. The men already feel attached 
to him — and the sentiment will strengthen, I 
think, as they know more of him. He will be well 
seconded by his field and staff ; and if the Twelfth 
does no service it will not be the fault of its offi- 
cers, as I believe. We are to be temporarily 
brigaded, in our present camp, with the 25th and 
27th New Jersey. 

Yours, B. 



ARMY UFE IN VIRGINIA. 23 

VI. 

Camp Casey, East Capitol Hill, 
Washington, Oct. 14, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

The health of the Twelfth is on the whole good. 
Some twenty-five members of the regiment are 
suffering from minor ailments, brought on in 
most cases by exposure on guard duty or sleeping 
in damp clothes; but with a spell of fair weather 
— thus far it has been rather cool, damp and vari- 
able — they will soon be on duty again. There 
has been but one case of a dangerous character, 
which terminated fatally last night. 

We are giving strict attention nowadays to 
company and battalion drill, and shall soon be 
able to make a presentable appearance. 

The Thirteenth regiment, Col. Randall, arrived 
yesterday afternoon, after a comfortable passage 
from Brattleboro, and has gone into camp to-day 
about half a mile west of us. It is to be brigaded 
with us and the 25th and 27th New Jersey, under 
command of Col. Derrom of the 25th New Jersey. 
We are for the present attached to Gen. Casey's 
Division of the Reserved Army Corps for the 
Defence of Washington, and it is the general 



24 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

impression among the men that we may remain 
here for some weeks. 

Of Col. Derrom I know nothing except that I 
am told he is a German by birth, and an old sol- 
dier. In his first order of duties for the regi- 
ment, "Evening prayer at 8 P. M." has a place, 
week days, and he omits the inspections on Sun- 
day which in man}- brigades make Sunday the 
most laborious day of the week. Our Sunday 
order, at present, is as follows : "Church call, 
morning, at 10.30 A. M. Divine service (volun- 
tary) 11 A. M. Church call, afternoon, 3.30 P. 
M. Divine service, (positive) 4 P. M. All 
drills and parades except church and dress par- 
ade are omitted on Sunday . ' ' 

Our chaplain returned to us to-day after an 
absence of four days, having been under rebel 
rule at Chambersburg in the meanwhile. He 
left us at Baltimore to accompany a Vermont 
lady on her way to her brother, an officer in the 
Third Vt. who was lying at the point of death at 
Hagerstown; and was returning by the way of 
Chambersburg when the rebels* occupied the 
town. He thinks there were about 1500 of them. 
They were well mounted, and well clothed as far 

*Uuder Gen. J. E. B. Stuart. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 25 

as their captured US. clothing went — the men 
under strict discipline and perfect control of the 
officers, who conducted themselves for the most 
part in a very gentlemanly way. Private persons 
and property were strictly respected. They left 
in a great hurry, amounting almost to a panic. 

The chaplain being with us, the order for even- 
ing prayer was observed this evening. The reg- 
iment was massed in the dim twilight, and Mr. 
Brastow offered an earnest and appropriate prayer. 

An order read at dress parade to-night, directs 
the captains to hold their companies in readiness 
to march at a moment's notice. Forty rounds of 
ammunition apiece have been distributed to-day. 

I find soldiering no lazy business, thus far, and 
have literally no time to write a longer letter 
to-day. Yours, B. 



VII. 
Reviews and Battalion Drill. 

Camp Casey, East Capitol Hill, 
Washington, Oct. 18, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

Reviews have been the order of the day with 
us for three or four days past. On Wednesday, 



26 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

the four regiments temporarily composing this 
brigade, viz. the 12th and 13th Vermont, and 
the 25th and 27th New Jersey, were reviewed by 
Colonel Derrom, colonel commanding. The men 
were ordered out in "full marching order," which 
means with knapsacks packed, haversacks and 
canteens slung, forty rounds of ammunition in the 
cartridge box, and arms and equipments all com- 
plete. We were in harness about two hours and 
a half ; but the day was cool and it did not come 
hard on us. The good appearance and behavior 
of the troops brought out the following general 
order : 

"Headquarters Second Brigade, ) 
Casey's Division, 
Camp Casey, Capitol Hill, ) 
Washington, Oct. 16, 1862. 

GENERAL ORDER NO. 5. 
The colonel commanding this brigade, takes 
pleasure in giving credit to the several regiments 
of this brigade, for their smart appearance and 
general good order on review yesterday. The 
States they represent, as well as our common 
country, may be proud of them. The material is 
excellent, indeed cannot be surpassed, and it rests 
now with the officers of the brigade, whether this 
material shall be properly moulded or not. To 
do this, requires much devotion to duty, and a 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 27 

strict attention to the rules and regulations of the 
United States army, which will be their pride ; 
and it is hoped the officers will be examples of 
neatness, good order and military efficiency to 
the men. 

A true soldier is the most courteous of men — 
obedient, firm, systematic, temperate and orderly, 
trusting in God at all times and in all places. 
Soldiers ! aim each to be this perfect soldier. 
By order of 

A. Derrom, 
Colonel Commanding." 

Next day the brigade was reviewed by General 
Casey. This time I was not in the ranks but 
detailed on special duty, and so had an opportu- 
nity to see the display. To the four regiments 
above named was added the 14th Massachusetts 
battery of light artillery, six pieces. As I 
looked down the long line of bayonets, half a 
mile or more in length, it looked to me like an 
array of 10,000 men, and I began to have some 
conception how grand a display a parade of fifty 
or sixty thousand men must be. Of course I 
watched closely the marching and appearance of 
the different regiments, and was proud to find the 
1 2th Vermont, though the newest regiment on 
the ground the 13th Vermont excepted, second 
to no other present. This I am sure was not 



2S ARMY LIFE IX VIRGINIA. 

partiality on my part. I tried certainly to be per- 
fectly fair in my judgment, and if I found that 
we were inferior in drill to the New Jersey regi- 
ments, as we might naturally be expected to be, 
having been in camp days to their weeks, I meant 
to own it. But it was not so. Our officers were 
the most spirited in appearance, our men the 
quickest into line, the most uniform in marching, 
the most elastic in their step, the promptest in the 
simple evolutions ordered. And this was also the 
opinion of far better judges than myself, Gen- 
eral Casey having freely expressed his surprise at 
such proficiency in so new a regiment, and hav- 
ing transmitted to Col. Blunt a written expression 
of his gratification with our appearance, which 
was read to us, with the added thanks of the 
colonel, at dress parade next evening. While we 
were out on review, the Inspector of Camps, of 
Gen. Casey's division, inspected the camps and 
put a new feather in our cap, by declaring that 
he was glad at last to find in that of the Twelfth, 
a camp to which he might point other regiments, 
as an example of order and neatness. 

Yesterday was given to battalion drill, and 
to-day we have had another grand review, by 
Gens. Banks and Casey, of the troops of the two 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 29 1 

provisional brigades of Gen. Casey's division. 
These, when the order for review was issued, 
comprised eight regiments of New York, New 
Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont troops, with 
two batteries, but a sudden order called two of 
them to the field last night, and but .six regi- 
ments with the two batteries were on the ground. 
I wish I had the time to fully describe this review ; 
but I must make it short. 

The day was bright and again the Twelfth won 
high praise. The Fifteenth Connecticut surpassed 
us a little in marching; but then the Connecticut 
regiment has been three months in camp, is a par- 
ticularly good regiment, and its company lines, 
were not over two-thirds the length of ours — an 
important consideration in marching and wheel- 
ing. 

We are as proud of our field officers as they 
are of the men. Col. Blunt always attracts atten- 
tion by his keen eye, lithe figure, and fine horse- 
manship. He rides a large dark bay horse, of 
English blood and training, presented to him by 
Thaddeus Fairbanks of St. Johnsbury. Our lieu- 
tenant colonel, Farnham, with nothing of show 
in his composition — for he is a very quiet as 
well as efficient officer — is handsome in face and 



30 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

figure, and the beautiful and fiery bay horse 
which he rides is much admired. Major 
Kiugsley also rides a handsome bay. Our Adju- 
tant rides a jet black Morgan stallion. Col. Ran- 
dall of the Thirteenth, rides a splendid chestnut 
charger; and it was agreed that there were no 
better looking officers on the ground, from Major 
Gen. Banks down, than the Vermont officers, or 
better horses than the Vermont horses. 

The troops, after review, were marched down 
to the city, through Pennsylvania Avenue to 
Gen. Casey's headquarters near Long Bridge, and 
then back to camp, making in all a march of six 
miles or more. The boys stood it well. They 
are getting toughened pretty rapidly, although 
many suffer from diarrhoea and colds. The list 
of sick men in hospital, however, does not aver- 
age over twenty, none of them being very sick. 

I find on looking over such of my letters as 
have returned to me in the Free Press, that I have 
omitted many things of interest to us here, and 
perhaps, to our friends at home. The advent of 
our mule teams is one. I ought to remember 
that, I am sure, for I travelled many a footsore 
mile, accompanying the officer who was sent to 
obtain them, over the pavements of Washington, 



ADJT. VAUGHN. SURG. CONN. 



Q. M. BROWNSON. 




LT.-COL. FARNHAM. COL. BLUNT. MAJ. KINGSLEY. 

FIELD AND STAFF OFFICERS, 12th VERMONT VOLS. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 31 

from one army office to another, before we 
secured them. We have five teams of four mules 
each. Thedriverrid.es one of the wheel mules, 
and drives by a rein attached to the head of one 
of the leaders. They were but half broken when 
we took them, and do not understand English at 
all. There is no such word as "whoa" in the 
negro dialect, the monosyllable "jay" taking its 
place, — and the mules do not always mind that. 
Their yay is not yea nor their neigh a neigh 
proper, by any means. The scene was a rich one, 
when our boys took them up Pennsylvania 
Avenue, the first day, on their way to camp. 
They cleared one side of the broad street as effect- 
ively as a charge of cavalry, and came within one 
of riding over one of the street railroad cars, 
horses, passengers and all. But I cannot tell 
every thing. If I jot down hastily now and then 
a circumstance or scene of interest, it is the most 
I can do. 

Yours, B. 



32 AEMT LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

VIII. 

The Army Hospitals — A Washington 
Dust- Storm. 

Camp Casey, East Capitol Hill, 
Washington, Oct. 23, 1862. 

Dear Free Press: 

The health of a regiment is apt to be a matter 
of considerable interest to its members and to 
their friends. The health of the Twelfth may, I 
suppose, be called pretty good. The longest sick 
list, as yet, has been thirty-two privates and six 
officers. Only two or three of these can be called 
very sick. Some are merelj* home-sick, while on 
the other hand, there are to be added, in making 
a complete account a number suffering from ail- 
ments not severe enough to figure in the regimental 
reports. The men, as a general thing, have a 
repugnance to going into hospital. The hospi- 
tal is a large tent, kept warm by stoves, in which 
the sick men lie on straw, placed on the ground, 
as the Government does not furnish cots. It 
looks a little hard; but ours is a good field hospi- 
tal, and the inmates are better off than many in 
and around this city. The sick and wounded 
men in the permanent hospitals in Washington, 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 33 

Georgetown and Alexandria, number thirty-four 
thousand — an army in themselves. Many of 
these are in tents, for want of houses, and many, 
I fear, from what I hear, suffer from want of suit- 
able care. The Government is now building on the 
plain here, not far from our camp, some immense 
one-story wooden buildings, for a general hospi- 
tal, which, when completed, will give the cover- 
ing of a roof to thousands who now shiver in the 
hospital tents. 

To return to our own regiment and company, — 
our hospital steward, Mr. Hard, is a kind, skillful 
and faithful man; the hospital orderly, Wm. B. 
Lund, of Company C, is also a trusty and excellent 
man; the chaplain interests himself heartily in 
the sick men. So far as they can secure it, all" 
our sick will have kind and suitable care. I do 
not speak of the surgeons. Dr. Conn, the assist- 
ant surgeon, has been sick, himself, with a fever, 
ever since our arrival. He is improving. None 
of our Burlington boys have been seriously ill, 
thus far, with the exception of W. W. Walker, 
who has a combined attack of fever and ague and 
dysentery, — and but one of our company (Col- 
lamer) can be called dangerously sick. He was 
suffering terribly with dysentery and vomiting 



34: ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

yesterday. To-day he has been removed by Capt. 
Page to a comfortable private boarding-house in 
the city, and one of our best men left in charge of 
him. 

On many, probably on the majority of the men, 
the out-door life and abundance of exercise have 
a very favorable effect. They eat heartily, sleep 
soundly, enjoy themselves pretty well, and grow 
fat. Most of them, however, have worn out, thus 
soon, the romance of soldiering, and are ready to 
own that the life of a private soldier is a rather 
rough one. There are some discomforts about 
tent-life on East Capitol Hill, it must be owned. 
What do you think of a bath of thirty-six hours' 
duration in Washington dirt ? That is what we 
have been enjoying yesterday and to-day. It had 
been quite dusty for a day or two and you must 
remember that we are on a bare surface of clay, 
denuded of grass and easily ground into the finest, 
most adhesive and most disagreeable dust in the 
world — the dust of Washington. It had sifted 
pretty thoroughly over and into every thing in 
our tents, when yesterday morning the wind 
began to blow. It commenced before light with 
a furious gust, which woke our thousand sleepers, 
and many other thousands around us, to find the 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 35 

dust pouring in upon us through every opening 
and crevice. We sprang up and with blankets 
and over-coats closed the openings; but the 
dust was still there, kept in constant motion by 
the slatting of our canvas walls, and the only way 
was to lie down again and take it as it came. 
What a dirty crew crawled out of the tents that 
morning ! It was of little use to brush or wash 
— which latter habit, by the way, has to be 
indulged with moderation in our camp, for we 
are short of water. There is water in the Poto- 
mac, and in some wells around us, but these lat- 
ter are drawn on constantly by other regiments 
as well as our own. The one nearest us, on which 
we relied almost entirely, has given out; and hav- 
ing to be brought a considerable distance, water 
is now a luxury if not a rarity, in the camp of 
the Twelfth. The wind kept up and the dust 
with it, and it is not fairly down yet. It is a 
peculiar life, when you must eat, breathe and 
drink earth, instead of food, air and water. You 
open your mouth, it is as if some one had put in a 
spoonful of pulverized clay. You put j^our hand 
to your hair, it feels like a dust brush. You 
touch your cheek, it is a clod. You place your 
finger in your ear, it is like running it into a hole 



36 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

in the ground. You draw from one of the dust 
holes in your clothes, the mud-stained rag which 
a few hours since was your clean handkerchief, 
and wipe a small pile of "sacred soil" from the 
corner of either eye. You look on the faces of 
your comrades, they are of the earth , earthy. The 
dust penetrates every fibre of every article of cloth- 
ing; you feel dirty clear through. But it is of no 
use to attempt to describe it; it is unutterable— this 
plague of dust. It has not prevented, however, the 
company and battalion drills, and a brigade drill, 
by General Casey , of this brigade and the Eleventh 
Massachusetts Battery attached to it, came off 
to-day. It was emphatically a dusty affair. 

There are frequent movements of regiments 
about us. More come than go. The twenty- 
fifth and Twenty-seventh Maine, and the Four- 
teenth New Hampshire, have arrived within 
a day or two, and are encamped close to us. 
The latter is under marching orders, however, 
and will be off to-morrow. Two or three of 
the neighboring regiments have fine brass bands, 
and so we have good music around us on 
some of the clear mornings. There is talk 
of organizing a band for the Twelfth from the 
musical talent in the ranks. Our drum major, 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 37 

Perley Downer, has been made brigade drum 
major of this provisional brigade. Company C, 
received him, after dress parade last evening 
when the order for his promotion was received, 
with presented arms and three cheers, to which 
Major Downer responded in a characteristic little 
speech . 

October 25. 

The dust storm is over. The frost lies this 
morning thick and white on the ground — the 
first one of the season here. The sick are all 
doing well, except Captain Savage of Company 
A, who has been delirious and ran out of camp in 
his shirt and drawers last evening. He was found 
after a while in the barracks of a neighboring 
regiment. 

October 26. 

We had a regular soaker to-day — hard rain all 
day; tents soaked through; camp ground swim- 
ming; mud from five to fifteen inches deep; noth- 
ing done but to keep the water out and eat our 
meals. It is raining harder than ever since dark. 
I have just been out and made a raise of a couple 
of shelter tents, which we have thrown over our 
tent and hope thus to keep the water from drip- 



38 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

ping on us. The ground is soaked so that the 
tent pins have but a slight hold and a gust of 
wind would bring down half the tents in the reg- 
ment. 

The Fourteenth regiment was sent up to Chain 
Bridge night before last, which shows that the 
Vermont regiments are not to be brigaded together 
at present. 

I think, from what I hear to-night, that we are 
likely to remain here awhile longer; but all is 
uncertainty as to army movements. 

Yours, B. 



IX. 



Organization of the Second Vermont 
Brigade. 

Camp Casey, East Capitol Hill, 
Washington, Oct. 28, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

All the Vermont regiments are now here, the 
Sixteenth having arrived yesterday . As the Four- 
teenth and Fifteenth were sent across the Poto- 
mac on their arrival, we had about given up the 
expectation that the new Vermont regiments 
would be brigaded together. But last night an 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 39 

order came, brigading them together. The New 
Jersey regiments with which we have been brig- 
aded are on the march to-day, and the Vermont 
regiments which were sent across the river will 
come back and be posted near us. The Sixteenth 
went into camp right over against us last night. 
They slept under the little shelter tents — if sleep 
they could, for it was a very cold night, the 
ground damp and covered with white frost this 
morning. They would have had a rather poor 
look, too, if left to themselves, for something to 
eat, but they were not allowed to go hungry. 
The Thirteenth regiment had them to supper last 
night and the Twelfth invited them to breakfast 
this morning. Each company entertained the 
company of the corresponding letter, and Com- 
pany C of the Sixteenth, who were the guests of 
the Howard Guard, got a first-rate breakfast and 
acknowledged our hospitality before they filed 
away, with three hearty cheers for the Twelfth. 
The men of the Sixteenth are a fine, hearty look- 
ing set of men, and behaved like gentlemen, as 
they are. 

The brigading of these Vermont regiments is 
particularly satisfactory to us, and we of the 
Twelfth were also gratified that command of the 



40 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

brigade should fall to our colonel . Company C 
first got the news, just after dark last evening, 
and turning out, they filed down to the colonel's 
tent, led by Captain Page, and gave three cheers 
for the Second Vermont brigade, and Colonel 
Blunt commanding. This called out the colonel 
who made one of the little speeches which he 
makes so happily, stopping when he gets through. 
He congratulated the men on the brigading of 
these five fine Vermont regiments, which, he felt 
sure would fight side by side like true comrades. 
He explained that the command fell to him by 
virtue of his rank as senior colonel; that it was 
merely temporary and could last only till a brig- 
adier general should be placed over us, as he 
trusted a good one soon would be. "We have 
hitherto, my boys," he said, "seen but the pleas- 
antest part of a soldier's life. Thus far we have 
known little of trial and suffering, and nothing of 
danger. The rough times are yet to come. 
When they come we must meet them like men, 
each doing the very best he knows how to do, for 
the cause of the country, for the honor of our 
State, and for the credit of the Twelfth, and look- 
ing to God to grant us success." 

Other companies came up in succession, 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 41 

«ach to cheer the colonel and call him out 
for a speech, the drum corps winding up the series 
with a salute and Yankee Doodle. On the whole, 
it was quite a little time, for an impromptu one. 

I wrote of dust the other day. We have had a 
touch of a different kind of storm since. Day 
before yesterday our first steady rain set in. All 
the orders for the day with the exception of 
guard-mounting and calls to meals, had the 
go-by, and the men kept closely within their 
tents. At nightfall the air grew colder, the wind 
higher, and the rain heavier. Our tents, which 
are not new, had hitherto kept out the rain pretty 
well, but did not prove impervious to the big 
drops driven by the storm. They came right 
through the canvas, spattering in our faces, cov- 
ering our blankets with a heavy dew, and run- 
ning down the inside of the tent in streams. 

Things began to have a decidedly damp look 
for the privates. There is considerable virtue, 
however, in good woolen and India rubber blank- 
ets; and most of us succeeded in cuddling on and 
under them, in some shape, so as to get some 
sleep without dreaming of Noah's flood. About 
four o'clock in the morning it stopped raining and 
began to pour down in sheets. Our company 



42 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

streets became rivers; the water in parts of the 
camp overran the trenches around the tents, and 
poured in upon the inmates. The ground, soaked 
to mud, ceased to hold the tent pins, and many 
a luckless soldier had to turn out in the storm 
and drive his stakes anew. It was a juic)- time 
all around. But daylight came, at last, with 
much apparent difficulty, and the question of 
breakfast began to stare us in the face. We were 
cold, wet and hungry. The storm had filled the 
kitchen trenches with water, instead of fire. 
There was no chance for anything hot; should 
we have anything but rain-soaked bread ? Some 
companies did not. The good cooks of Com- 
pany C, however, had been equal to the 
emergency, had kept their fires burning while 
there was any possibility of so doing, and had 
provided in the night against the contingencies of 
the morning. We had a good breakfast of bread, 
beef and pork, and, thus fortified within, possessed 
our souls in patience till the storm broke away 
about 9 o'clock. It was a hard storm, even for 
this locality, and left a pond of many acres where 
our parade ground has been heretofore. The day 
came off clear and cold, and before night the 
blankets were sufficiently dried to sleep comfort- 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 43 

ably in. Another wet night would probably have 
added considerably to the length of our sick list; 
as it was but a few over the average were reported. 

Yours, B. 



X. 

Ordered to the Field. 

Camp of the Second Vermont Brigade, 
Near Munson's Hill, 
Virginia, Oct. 30, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

"Change sweepeth over all," sang the plain- 
tive Motherwell, and we find the line to have as 
much truth as poetry in the army. Yesterday at 
this time every man in the Second Vermont 
brigade thought we were good for a stay of some 
weeks on East Capitol Hill. The Vermont regi- 
ments had been brigaded together. The Four- 
teenth and Fifteenth, ordered across the Potomac 
ou their arrival, had been ordered back and were 
establishing themselves in camp near us. It was 
reasonable to suppose that some time for drill in 
battalion and brigade evolutions would be granted 
before sending us forward. All the other troops 
about us had been ordered away, leaving our 



44 ARMY LIFE EN VIRGINIA. 

brigade alone on East Capitol Hill. Some troops 
would of course be left there, and we must be the 
ones. So reasoned officers and men, and the con- 
clusion was easily reached that we should stay 
where we were for the present. In this convic- 
tion the men of the Twelfth began making them- 
selves more comfortable in camp. Lumber was 
procured at $25 a thousand and upwards. Our 
little A tents, in which we enacted the daily and 
nightly miracle of stowing six men, with six mus- 
kets and about as much harness as is allotted to 
so many horses in a well arranged stable, together 
with bedding, crockery and tinware and goods 
and chattels all and sundry, belonging to said 
family of six, in a tent seven feet square on the 
ground and tapering in a wedge to the height of 
six or six and one-half feet, — these little tents 
were elevated on sides built up of boards, by 
which their original capacity was almost doubled 
and the comfort of the occupants at least trebled. 
Shelves were rigged, pegs put in to bang guns 
and trappings on, floors laid, and various little 
contrivances to enhance order and cleanliness 
added. With what satisfaction we looked at our 
new structures ! How we enjoyed a residence in 
which we could stretch our arms at length above 



AKMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 45 

our heads, and sit around the sides without doub- 
ling together like so many jack-knives ! With 
what complacency did we think of our own thrift, 
and look forward to days and weeks of such com- 
parative luxury ! Alas for the folly of human 
expectations ! With nightfall came the order to 
move into Virginia, and here we are to-night, five 
miles the other side of the Potomac, our new 
acquisitions left far behind us, and not a saw-mill 
or lumber yard this side of Washington or Rich- 
mond, so far as we know. They may talk of the 
sorrow of leaving the ancestral roof-tree, the 
hearth around which boyhood's days were spent 
and youth's and manhood's memories clustered; 
— that can be described; but the pangs with which 
we left our wooden walls and floors, are indescrib- 
able. But such is life in the army. We have, 
however, some consolation; our kind colonel and 
quartermaster have promised that if the wagons 
can be procured to transport it, our lumber shall 
follow us hither. 

The five Vermont regiments broke camp at day- 
break this morning. The order was to form line 
at half past seven and march at eight. Col. 
Blunt, commanding, is a prompt man. At half 
past seven the line was formed, and at eight the 



46 AKMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

column marched. It swept down Penns)dvania 
Avenue, as goodly an array of five thousand stout, 
intelligent, spirited men as eye ever looked on. 
The march was a very comfortable one for the 
men, and our present camp bids fair to be a 
great improvement on our late one, as far as the 
ground and nearness to wood and water are 
concerned. 

You have heard before this of the death of 
young Collamer of Shelburne. It is the first gap 
made by death in the ranks of Company C, and 
we feel it keenly. He was an amiable and excel- 
lent young man, with the making in him, to all 
appearance, of a stout and hearty soldier. His 
disease was uncontrollable. For a day or two 
the doctors thought he might rally, but he did 
not agree with them. "I shall die in three days," 
he said, one night, and in three days he died, 
peacefully, even happily, for he had made his 
peace with God. 

There are no very sick men of our Company; 

and I believe we shall find our present camp, on 

new ground not tainted by the stay upon it of so 

many successive thousands, a healthier one than 

the old one. How long we shall stay here no one 

can say. 

Yours, B. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 47 

XI. 

A Little farther Toward the Front. 

Picket Station No. 35, Union Lines, 
Mount Pleasant, Fairfax Co., Va., 
November 3d, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

The Twelfth is making some progress. We 
are on "the Richmond road," from Alexandria, 
Va., to the South, which is one of several roads 
to Richmond. 

Camp Seward, the first camping ground of this 
brigade on the soil of the " Mother of Presi- 
dents," from which I wrote last, was on the 
edge of a clean stretch of oak timber near the 
famous "Munson's Hill." A few rods in the rear 
ran a stream of clear, sweet water. Here was a 
mat of furzy grass between us and the everlasting 
clay; here was shade in the heat of the day — the 
midday sun is hot here, yet; — here was wood — 
wood to burn if we wished a fire; forked sticks 
for toasting-forks and clothes-horses and gun- 
racks, to be had for the cutting; — wood to whittle, 
when one had time to indulge in that Yankee 
pastime. How different from that stretch of des- 
ert on East Capitol Hill where not a sliver for a 



48 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

tooth pick could be had at less than $25 a thou- 
sand feet, and water only came through much trib- 
ulation and by the pailful for a company. It was 
a right pleasant spot, and we began at once to be 
comfortable. The lumber on which to raise the 
tents for some of the boys, had followed us, and 
was put at once to its proper use. Others split out 
flat shooks and made them answer in place of 
boards. Others stockaded their tents with small 
logs, filling the cracks with fringes of cedar. The 
five regiments were stretched along side by side, 
and the camps hummed with activity. The woods 
were filled with men apparently on a big pic-nic. 
It lasted just one day ! Orders came for a grand 
review on the parade ground of Fort Albany, 
near by us, on Saturday morning. The regi- 
ments marched out to it at 10 o'clock, only to be 
turned back by orders for two regiments to strike 
tents and march at once, we knew not whither. 
At half past twelve the Twelfth and Thirteenth 
started for Alexandria, Colonel Randall command- 
ing in the temporary absence of Colonel Blunt, 
and the Thirteenth leading. Our A tents we left 
behind us and we carried shelter tents on our 
knapsacks, each man his half. Colonel Randall 
had ridden ahead, and our gait for the first two 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 49 

miles was set by an inexperienced officer of the 
Thirteenth, who forgot that men with heavy knap- 
sacks could not march at the pace of his fast walk- 
ing roadster, without feeling it. 

It was a very hot day. The men sprang to it, 
at a smart walk for the long legged ones and on 
the keen jump for the short men. We passed 
some squads of old troops. ' ' Where is the 
fight, boys ?' ' was the first question. ' 'There must 
be one," they added, — "men are not marched 
like that unless they are wanted in a mighty 
hurry." We got a rest in time to save a third 
of the two regiments from falling out; but the 
men had got blown at the outset and it made the 
whole march a pretty hard one. Near Alexan- 
dria we passed the camps of the paroled men and 
convalescents, which line the road. They came 
out by hundreds to see us go by, and laughed 
at our well stuffed knapsacks. ' ''You're green, ' ' 
they said, " You'll heave them away before you 
march many more marches. Then you'll see 
where you missed it." "We see where you missed 
it," replied Dick Erwin, the funny man of our 
company, whose supply of " chaff" is inexhaust- 
ible, — "it was when you hove away that soap 
and towels so soon." This hit at the unwashed 



50 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

appearance of the first spokesman and his crowd, 
brought a roar of laughter from three hundred 
hearers, and "the uncalled for remarks" dried up 
suddenly. After a halt in the outskirts of the city, 
we passed across Hunting Creek, and after a march 
of about ten miles, we were glad to halt, pitch 
our shelter tents in a hurry, eat the rations in our 
haversacks, and drop off to sleep. We discovered 
first, however, that we were to picket a space of 
six miles in the Union lines around Washing- 
ton, left unguarded by the inarching of Sickles' 
brigade, which with many thousand other troops, 
left the day before to reinforce Sigel. Two com- 
panies of the Thirteenth were at once sent off 
on that duty. 

After dinner on Sunday, Nov. 2d, we marched 
south on the Mt. Vernon road about a mile and a 
half to our present camp; and within fifteen min- 
utes after our arrival four companies were detailed 
for picket duty . Company C was of the number 
and your correspondent found it, as it has often been 
said to be, the pleasantest part of soldiering. We 
were marched off rapidly two or three miles far- 
ther into the country to the brow of the high 
ground which looks off on the valley of the Poto- 
mac, stretching many a mile to the south, in a 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 51 

varied scene of meadow and timber, now glowing 
with the bright colors of the American autumn, 
and far away to the west to the lands on the 
Accotink. The line of picket stations we were 
to man extended three miles in each direc- 
tion, reaching to the Potomac on the extremeleft. 
Two companies were taken to the right and com- 
panies C and D waited till the officer, an aid of 
General Casey, who was to station us, returned. 
As we waited we heard the first sound of actual 
conflict. From the north-west came, distinct and 
unmistakable, the sound of cannon from the dis- 
tant battlefield,* of which you, no doubt, have 
the news, though as yet we have but uncertain 
rumors of it. For an hour and a half the boom- 
ing was incessant. It mostly died away, how- 
ever, before we started out upon the line. We were 
hurried along just at nightfall, leaving now one, 
now two, now three, now a reserve of ten or fif- 
teen men, at the posts. A dilapidated log hut, a 
booth of boughs or the shade of a big oak, gave 
shelter, and fires of brush or rails were burning at 
each. For twenty-four hours we were to stand 
guard here. My own station, where I am writ- 

* Engagement of McClellan's advance with confederate cavalry 
and infantry, at Snicker's Gap, November 2d, 1862. 



52 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

ing, is on the estate of Mt. Pleasant, in front of 

the residence of Mrs. W , its owner. From 

the brow of the high, level plateau I have before 
me a view of unusual interest and beauty. Away 
below winds the Potomac through a magnificent 
valley, woodland and meadow varying the pros- 
pect and evergreens relieving the bright coloring 
of the oak forest. Directly in front lies Mt. Ver- 
non, the house hidden by an interposing ridge; 
but the estate plainly in view. To the left is Fort 
Washington, built in 1812 and now occupied by 
Union forces. Mansions of once wealthy "first 
families" are visible between the trees,- here and 
there. It is a magnificent view. I had four hours 
of watch, from 11 to 3. It was a mild night, 
sometimes a little clouded, anon the full moon 
bringing out the prospect almost as by daylight. 
Four or five picket fires gleamed along the line ; 
but the night was still as death. There was no 
sound of armies or man or beast. I can bear 
personal witness to the fact that all was "quiet on 
the Potomac." 

There is nothing exciting in this duty. We 
know that there are no rebel forces near us ; but 
after all, we are at the front, doing duty with 
loaded arms, and no armed body is between us 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 53 

and the lines of the enemy. I would like to 
describe this old house, 150 years old, and some 
of the peculiar features of this scene, but the 
relief is now in sight to take our places, and I 
must march back to camp. 

The health of the regiment is very good. Lieu- 
tenant William L,oomis of Company C is now 
acting as adjutant of the Twelfth, Adjutant 
Vaughan being A. A. A. G. — acting assistant 
adjutant general — of the brigade. Two men, one 
in Company I, another in Company K, shot 
themselves accidentally with their revolvers yes- 
terday — one through the hand, one through the 
ankle. Yours, B. 



XII. 

Camp Vermont — First Snow Storm. 

Camp Vermont. 
Fairfax County, Va., Nov. 7, 1862. 

Dear Free Press: 

The camp of the Second Vermont Brigade, in 
this place, south of Alexandria on the Mt. Ver- 
non road, has been christened "Vermont." And 
to-day it looks more like Vermont than Virginia 



54 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

is wont to at this time of the year. We are enjoy- 
ing a veritable snow storm. It began at 7 o'clock 
this morning, has fallen steadily, and now at 7 
p. m., at least five inches of snow lies upon the 
ground. Several gentlemen who spent last winter 
in Camp Griffin, Va., assure me that there was 
no such fall of snow in this region in all last 
winter. 

The air is chill, and it will freeze sharply 
to-night. It is a sufficiently notable thing to be 
announced by telegraph, and much sympathy and 
concern may be expended by our Vermont friends 
as they read of half a foot of snow in Wash- 
ington, and think of their soldier sons and 
brothers as shivering under canvas or standing on 
picket in the storm. But there is little suffering 
in this regiment. Not that a small tent — our 
tents followed us hither from Camp Seward — 
soaked with moisture from damp snow, is the 
most warm and cheerful habitation imaginable; 
but it can be closed tight enough to keep the 
snow from actual contact with its inmates, and by 
piling on what woolen clothing he has, in all 
shapes, a healthy man can keep up the warmth 
of his body, and by snuggling close to his com- 
rades can sleep with some approach to comfort. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 55 

But our Vermont boys are not restricted in all 
cases to the means and appliances for comfort 
furnished them by Uncle Sam, and are, I find, apt 
to be equal to most emergencies. They are to 
this, at any rate. A couple of our old soldiers, for- 
merly of the First regiment, set us the pattern of 
a tent stove, two or three days since. A piece of 
sheet iron, a foot or two square, bent as to the 
edges so as to form a shallow pan, was inverted 
over a hole in the ground of corresponding size ; 
a tube of bent sheet iron, leading from the outer 
air to the bottom of the hole provides air, and a 
joint or two of rusty stovepipe, eked out with one 
or two topless and bottomless tin cans, makes a 
chimney which draws like a blister plaster. It 
don't look much like a stove; I can't say exactly 
what it does look like — as near as anything, per- 
haps, like the very young offspring of a cross 
between the Monitor and a Dutch oven; but it 
answers the purpose. Its chimney, smoking furi- 
ously this morning amid the flying snow flakes, 
gave the hint to our boys, and half of Company 
C were off at once for material wherewith to build 
similar nondescripts. They rummaged a deserted 
camp near us, and came back loaded with pieces 
of old stove pipe and scraps of cast and sheet iron, 



56 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

which were quickly put together; and as I looked 
up our company street an hour ago, I saw the 
rusty pipes sticking out of the ground by the side 
of more than half the tents, the curling smoke 
from each telling of warmth and comparative com- 
fort within. 

There were some, however — the tenthold of 
which your humble correspondent is a member 
among them — who were not lucky enough to find 
the needful supply of old sheet iron . So we took 
our dinner of boiled pork, bread and coffee, in 
our damp tent, ate it in sour and meditative 
silence, and held a council of war at its close. 
Something had to be done ; our toes and 
fingers and noses were cold; our straw and blankets 
were damp. We must have &fire; how to get it 
was something of a question. Our sole supply of 
metal was in our dinner furniture before us. The 
problem was, — given a table knife and fork, a tin 
cup and a tin plate, to extemporize therewith a 
stove, pipe and chimney. But we set to work, 
and Mr. Ericsson himself could not have done 
more with the same material. With the knife 
and cup we excavated a hole in the firm and 
adhesive clay which forms the floor of our tent; 
at the top the hole was a little less in circumfer- 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 5T 

ence than our tin plate; its bottom, a foot or more 
below the surface, was somewhat larger. A hole 
was then dug outside the tent, sloping inward 
till it nearly met our excavation inside, and the 
bottoms of the two were connected by a passage 
two inches in diameter, worked through with the 
knife. From the top of our circular cavity within, 
a trench was made extending outside the tent, 
and covered by a brickbat, which turned up 
opportunely when most needed. The tin plate 
was placed over the hole, and the thing was done. 
You perceive the nature of the invention. This 
planet on which we dwell forms the body of our 
stove. The tin plate is both door and top of the 
same. The small hole at the bottom is the 
draught ; the trench at the top is the flue. We fill 
it with hard wood chips, light a fire, and it works 
quite as well as could be expected. 

The heating surface was pretty small, it is true; 
but we kept the old plate red hot by assiduous 
feeding. In an hour or two the ground around 
began to be sensibly warmed. A dry spot devel- 
oped itself, as soon as the snow stopped falling, 
in the canvas of our tent over the stove, and 
extended slowly along the side. The temperature 
rose sensibly within; — and when by a fortunate 



58 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

stroke of policy we were enabled to substitute a 
sheet iron mess pan for our dinner plate, thus 
quadrupling our heating surface, we had all the 
heat we needed. We can no longer see our breath 
within our linen house. We laid our bread on the 
top of our stove and had hot toast with our tea 
for supper; and the prospects are that we shall 
sleep warm and dry to-night. 

November 8th, 1862. 

So we did, though the night was a very sharp 
one. Our snow stands the sunshine well to-day 
and will not be wholly gone, I think, before 
to-morrow. 

Nearly half the regiment is off on "fatigue 
duty" to-day. This, it seems, is the military 
term for the process which is said to be McClel- 
lan's forte. In common English it is called dig- 
ging. The defensive strength of Fort Lyon, half 
a mile to the north of our camp, is being increased 
by some formidable outworks, and fifteen hun- 
dred men from our brigade are to enjoy daily for 
a while the privilege of digging the trenches and 
throwing up the breastworks. 

Orders are out, moreover, for us to build log 
huts for winter quarters. This looks like winter- 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 59 

ing us here, though it is quite within the range of 
possibility, that we shall build and leave for 
others to occupy. There are other indications, 
however, which point toward a somewhat pro- 
tracted stay here. If so, Camp Vermont is worth 
a line or two of description. The Twelfth is 
encamped on a sloping hillside, by a stream of 
good water, and in close proximity to the family 
mansion of the manor of "Spring Bank." Of 
this Mr. George Mason is the proprietor — an old 
gentleman who in this great contest between the 
Government and rebellion, announces himself as 
neutral. In token of his position he had a white 
flag hung out, when our regiment, without say- 
ing by your leave, marched into his grounds. 
A written notice, attached to a tree, informed all 
whom it might concern, that Mr. George Mason 
could accommodate no person outside of his own 
family in his house, and had stuck this up to 
save applicants the pain of a peremptory refusal. 
Nevertheless, I preceive that Col. Blunt has his 
headquarters in a wing of the mansion, and the 
harns are filled with the horses of the regiment. 
One of the old darkies of the establishment hit it 
about right, as one of his brother contrabands 
expressed astonishment at the summary exclusion 



60 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

of his master's cows from their wonted stalls for 
the accommodation of Yankee horses : "Ole Massa 
might a' been nuff of a Union man to hang out 
de stars and stripes, den he got sarved better." 

Around us, within a circuit of a quarter of a 
mile, are the other regiments of our brigade. 
There are woods close by to furnish timber and 
fuel, and though it is not as sheltered and pleas- 
ant a place as our last encampment, we can make 
ourselves comfortable here, beyond a doubt. 

The Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth regi- 
ments are to have their old French and Belgian 
muskets exchanged for Enfield rifles in a day or 
two, and will then do their share of picket duty. 
Some of your anxious readers may have supposed, 
possibly, from the fact that we are doing such 
duty, that we are in the face of the enemy, 
or somewhere near it. Such is by no means 
the case. It is true that, with the exception 
of some cavalry videttes, there are no armed 
bodies between us and the enemy on the direct 
line south; but the rebel lines are twenty 
or thirty miles to the south and west of us, and 
are likely to be farther off rather than nearer. 
Our only danger at their hands is from a raid, 
and to that we should be liable, it seems, as far 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 61 

north as Chambersburg, Pa., and how much far- 
ther General Stuart, C. S. A., only knows. We 
do not intend, however, to let that active gentle- 
man through, about here. Our pickets have 
thus far brought into camp three prisoners. 
One was a horridly dirty and animated, exter- 
nally, specimen of humanity, who turned out to be 
an estray from the convalescent camp at Alexan- 
dria, who had wandered beyond our lines, per- 
haps with the intention of deserting. The others 
profess to be deserters from the rebels, and have 
been taken for safe keeping to Fairfax Seminary. 
Colonel Blunt continues in command of 
this brigade. Colonel E. H. Stoughton, we hear, 
is to be assigned to the command of a brigade in 
General Brooks's division of the Army of the 
Potomac— a high honor for a young man of 
twenty-two. Yours, B. 

XIII. 
An Ordinary Day in Camp. 

Camp Vermont, ) 

Fairfax Co., Va., Nov. 14, 1862. j 

Dear Free Press : 

You have discovered that I make little or no 
mention of army movements ; nor do I indulge in 



62 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

criticism or speculation in regard to the course of 
the war in any of its parts. Such matters I leave 
to the correspondents from headquarters. My 
object is to give your readers, so many of whom 
have friends in our ranks, some idea of our life 
and business, as seen, not from the officer's mar- 
quee or the reporter's saddle, but from the tent of 
the private. I have nothing to write, conse- 
quently, about the recent change in the chief 
command of the Army of the Potomac, or its 
probable results. I may say, however, that there 
has been no mutiny in the Second Vermont brig- 
ade in consequence of General McClellan's 
removal, and that any change that promises more 
active and efficient service for the army, will have 
our hearty approval, as a portion of the same. 

In the absence of any thing especially exciting, 
let me try and describe, briefly, an ordinary day 
in camp. You are perhaps, familiar enough with 
the regular arrangement of tents in a regimental 
camp. The tents of the colonel and his staff are 
commonly disposed in a line at the rear of the 
camp. In a parallel line with them are the tents 
of the line officers, each captain's tent fronting 
the street of his company. The company streets 
run at right angles to the line of the officers' 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 63 

tents, and are of variable widths, in different 
camps, according to the extent of the ground. In 
our present camp they are about twenty-five feet 
wide. On each side are the company tents, nine 
on a side, facing the street on either side. At the 
inner end of the street, on one side, is the cook 
tent, occupied by the company cooks and stores, 
and in front of it is the "kitchen range." Whose 
patent this is, I cannot say. It is composed of a 
trench, four feet long and two deep, dug in the 
ground. In the bottom of this the fire is kindled. 
Forked sticks at the corners, support a couple of 
stout poles, parallel with the sides, across which 
are laid shorter sticks on which hang the 
kettles. With this apparatus, and an oblong fry- 
ing pan of formidable dimensions, say three 
feet long by two wide, is done all the cooking of 
the company. 

The first signs of life, inside of the lines of the 
main camp guard, are to be seen at these points. 
The cooks must be up an hour or two before light, 
to get their fires started and breakfast cooking. 
The fires on the cold mornings, and most of the 
mornings are cold, are objects of attraction to 
those of the soldiers who for any reason have 
lain too cold to sleep. These come shivering to 



■64 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

the fires, and watch the cooks and warm their 
shins, till reveille. There are stoves now, how- 
ever, of some sort, in most of the tents, and 
almost all can be as warm as they wish at any 
time. 

At daybreak the drum major marshals his 
drum and fife corps at the centre of the line, and 
the reveille, with scream of fife and roll of drum, 
arouses the sleeping hundreds, lying wrapped in 
their blankets under the canvas roofs. The 
reveille is a succession of five tunes, of varying 
time, common and quick, closing with three rolls, 
by the end of which each company is expected to 
be in line in the company street. The men tum- 
ble out for the most part just as they have slept, 
some with blankets wrapped about them, some in 
slippers and smoking caps, some in overcoats. 
They fall into line and the orderly sergeant calls 
the roll and reads the list of details for guard, 
police, fatigue duty, etc. After roll call, many 
dive back into their tents and take a morning 
nap before breakfast ; others start in squads for 
the brook which runs close by the camp, to wash. 
The fortunate owners of wash basins — there are 
two in our company — bring them out, use them, 
and pass them over to the numerous borrowers; 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 65 

others wash in water from their canteens, one 
pouring on the hands of another. ' ' Police duty' ' 
comes at 6.15, and is performed by a squad under 
direction of a corporal. This varies slightly from 
the popular notion of such duty, which is com- 
monly supposed to consist in wearing a star and 
standing round on city street corners, with the 
occasional diversion of clubbing some non-resist- 
ant citizen. In camp "police duty" corresponds 
to what, when I was a bo)^ was called clearing 
up the door yard. The sweeping of the company 
streets, removal of unsightly objects, grading of 
the grounds, and work of similar character, comes 
under this head. At half past six comes the 
"surgeon's call." This is not a call made by the 
surgeon, who is not expected to appear in com- 
pany quarters unless for some special emergency; 
but o the orderly sergeant, who calls for any who 
have been taken sick in the night, and feel bad 
enough to own it and be marched off to the sur- 
geon's tent, where, after examination, they are 
ordered into hospital or on duty, as the case may 
require. 

Breakfast takes place at 7, by which time, in 
well r lered tents, the blankets have been shaken, 
folde , and laid away with the knapsacks in a 



66 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

neat row at the back of the tent, and the soldiers 
start out, cup in hand, for the cook tent, where 
each takes his plate with his allowance of bread 
and beef or pork, and fills his cup with coffee. 
Some sit and eat their breakfast on the wood pile 
near the fire; but most take their meals to their 
tents. The straw covered floor is the table, a 
rubber blanket the table cloth, and sitting round 
on the ground like so many tailors, we eat with 
an appetite which gives to the meal a zest almost 
unknown before we came "a sogering." Our 
meals do not differ greatly, the principal difference 
being that for dinner we have cold water instead 
of tea or coffee. The rations are beef, salt and 
fresh, three-fifths of the former to two of the 
latter, both of fair quality; salt pork, which has 
uniformly been excellent; bread, soft and hard, 
the former equal to first rate home-made bread, 
the latter in size, taste and quality resembling 
bassw T ood chips — very wholesome, however, and 
not unpalatable; rice, beans, both good, and pota- 
toes occasionally; coffee fair, and tea rather poor. 
Butter, which when good is one of the greatest 
luxuries in camp, cheese, apples, which with 
most Vermonters are almost an essential, and 
other knickknacks, are not furnished by govern- 



ARM"!' LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 67 

ment, but may be bought of the sutlers at high 
prices. Our men are great hands for toast ; 
and at every meal the cook-fires are surrounded 
with a circle of the boys holding their bread to 
the fire on forked sticks or wire toast racks of 
their own manufacture, and of wonderful size and 
description. So we/ live, and it shows to what 
the human frame may be inured by practice and 
hardship, that we can eat a meal of g;ood baked 
or boiled pork and beans, potatoes, boiled rice 
and sugar, coffee and toast, and take it not merely 
to sustain life, but actually with a relish — curious, 
isn't it? 

Dinner is at 12, dress parade at 4:30, and sup- 
per at 5:30. The heavy work of the men fills 
the intervals. This varies. At Capitol Hill it was 
company and battalion drills. Here it is digging 
in the trenches of Fort Lyon, and cutting lumber 
in the woods near by, for our winter quarters. 
Evenings are spent very much as they would be 
by most young men at home, in visiting their 
comrades, playing cards and checkers, writing 
letters, and reading. A common occupation of a 
leisure hour, with the smokers, is the carving of 
pipes from the roots of the laurel, found in pro- 
fusion in the woods here. It is a slow business, 



68 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

in most cases beginning with a chunk about half 
as large as one's head, which is reduced by slow 
degrees and patient whittling to the small size of 
a pipe bowl. Another common, but not so 
delightful pastime, is the washing of one's dirty 
clothes. Many of our men have learned to be 
expert washers, and that without wash-board or 
pounding-barrel . Those who have pocket money , 
however, can have their washing done by the 
"contraband" washerwomen, who have been on 
hand at every camp we have occupied. 

At half-past eight p. m. the tattoo is sounded 
by the drum and fife corps, playing several tunes 
as at reveille, when each company is again 
drawn up in its street and the roll called. At 
nine comes "taps," when ever)' light must be 
out in the tents, and the men turn in for their 
night's rest. The ground within the tents is 
covered with straw or cedar branches, on which 
are spread the rubber blankets ; this is the bed, 
the knapsack is the pillow. There is no trouble 
about undressing ; our blouses, or flannel fatigue 
coats, pantaloons and stockings, sometimes with 
overcoat added, are the apparel of the night, as 
of the day. We slip off our boots, drop in our 
places side by side, draw over us our blankets; 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 69 

and sleep, sound and sweet, soon comes to every 
eyelid. The man who can sleep at all, in camp, 
commonly sleeps .soundly and well. 

I spoke in the beginning of this letter of the 
absence of anything exciting in camp. We have 
since had something particularly exciting for 
Company C — the arrival of some boxes of good 
things sent by our kind friends in Burlington. 
We had had warning of their coming and were 
anxiously awaiting them. They reached camp 
after dark last evening; but the noise of unload- 
ing before the captain's tent told everyone that 
they had come, and an eager crowd hurried to 
the spot. A couple of pickaxes were quickly 
put in use. The covers flew off as if blown 
upwards by the explosive force of the good will 
and kind feeling imprisoned within, and the par- 
cels were quickly handed out to the favored ones, 
who thereupon disappeared within the tents, from 
which shouts of joy and laughter would come 
pealing as the things within were unpacked. 
What unrolling of papers and uncovering of boxes 
there has been, and uncorking of jars and bottles 
and munching of good things in every tent ! A 
bevy of children, in holiday time, were never 
more pleased with their presents than we with 



TO ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

our home luxuries, made doubly delicious by 
our confinement to army fare, and trebly valua- 
ble because they were from the friends at 
home. The whole thing was pronounced emphat- 
ically "bully" I beg you will divest this word 
of anything of coarseness or slang it may hereto- 
fore have had. It is the adjective which in the army 
expresses the highest form of admiration and is 
in constant use from the colonel and chaplain to 
the lowest private. When the soldier has pro- 
nounced a thing "bully," he can say no more. I 
wish you could have heard — and if you had 
listened sharply I think you might — the cheers 
and tiger which after roll call at tattoo last night, 
were given by Company C "for our friends in 
Burlington." 

The health of the regiment is improving. We 
have but thirteen men on the sick list, and none 
dangerously ill. 

The picket line our brigade is guarding has 
been moved out several miles, and now runs 
about two miles this side of Mt. Vernon. The 
weather is fine and the spirits of the men good. 
But they do not take kindly to "fatigue duty" 
on the trenches. They think they had rather be 
engaged in chasing or fighting rebels than in 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 71 

''strategy," however important the latter may be 
in all wars. Yours, B. 



XIV. 

Losses by Death — An Abortive Review. 

Camp Vermont, 
Fairfax Co., Va., Nov. 24, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

Death has again invaded the circle of our com- 
pany and has taken one of our best. We miss 
William Spaulding much. We did not expect to 
bring back all we took away from Burlington, 
but if asked which would probably be of the first 
to yield to the exposures of army life, who would 
have pointed out that fine handsome boy ? It 
seems hard that such should be sacrificed to the 
demon of rebellion. He had in him the making 
of a first rate soldier and a useful man. The 
regularity with which he performed all his mili- 
tary duties, from the day of his enlistment till 
disabled by sickness, was matter of remark; and 
his tall figure and pleasant face, in the first file of 
the company, was always a pleasant sight. He 
began to lose flesh and strength without any 



72 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

apparently sufficient reasons, and finally went 
into the regimental hospital; grew better, was 
placed on guard at a private house near here, 
where he had the shelter of a roof, caught cold, 
and died from congestion of the lungs. Captain 
Page, Lieutenant Wing, the chaplain and sur- 
geon, did all the>' could for him. He received 
calmly the intelligence that he must die, said he 
was ready, sent words of parting remembrance 
and admonition to his friends, and passed away 
quietly. His death has cast a shadow over the 
company, and we ask ourselves, "who will be the 
next?" 

One of the line officers of the regiment, Lieu- 
tenant Howard of the Northfield company, died 
in the hospital on Friday, from inflammation of 
the brain. The two deaths were made the occa- 
sion of some impressive remarks by Chaplain 
Brastow, at divine service yesterday. 

Many as are the contrasts between our life in 
the army and that we lead at home, there is none 
greater than that between our Sabbaths there and 
here. As we stood at regimental service yester- 
day, our chapel a vacant spot before the colonel's 
tent, our heads canopied only by the grey clouds 
drifting swiftly to the southwest, and the chill 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 73 

November wind blowing through our ranks, I 
could not but cast back a thought to the quiet 
and comfortable New England sanctuaries many 
of us have been wont to worship in. But we 
were better off than most of the regiments in the 
army, for but few of them, probably, had any 
Sabbath service at all. 

We have had four days of rain and I have the 
facts for an essay on Virginia mud, whenever I 
get time to write it, and I assure you it is a deep 
subject. 

Orders were out on Thursday for a grand re- 
view at Fort Albany, six miles from here, of all 
the forces on this side of the river. It was the 
third and hardest day of the storm. A counter- 
mand was expected; but none came, and the 
Twelfth, with three other regiments, took up its 
line of march. The mud varied from a thin por- 
ridge of one part red clay to three parts water, to 
a thick adhesive salve of three parts clay to one 
of water — there or thereabouts — I may not give 
the proportions exactly. It was a hard march. 
The foot planted in the red salve alluded to, is 
lifted with some difficulty, and comes up a num- 
ber of sizes larger, and three or four pounds 
heavier. A mile or two of such marching tries 



74 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

the sturdiest muscles. The march of our boys was 
that of a host of conquering heroes. They took the 
whole country — along with them, on their soles. 
In the lack of any affection on the part of the 
inhabitants, it was delightful to find such a strong 
attachment on the part of the "sacred soil." 
These were the only compensations. We couldn't 
see, somehow, the connection between this tramp 
through the mud, and the business of crushing 
out the rebellion; and when, a mile beyond Alex- 
andria, a courier met the column with orders to 
return to camp, the suspicion that all might just 
as well have staid in camp, became general. The 
substance of the proceeding was that four thou- 
sand men had a march of eight miles in a storm 
which made the bare idea of a review an absurd- 
ity — that was all. Perhaps "somebody blun- 
dered." 

The winter quarters of this regiment are to be 
long huts, one for a company, made of logs set 
endwise in the ground, on which a roof of boards 
will be placed. The} r make slow progress. The 
truth is this brigade has a good deal to do. Our 
regiments have a picket line of six miles to 
guard, the nearest point of which is five or six 
miles from camp. They furnish a thousand men 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 75 

daily, in good weather, to dig in the trenches of 
Fort Ivy on. They have to cut the timber for their 
winter quarters and construct the same, and they 
have to fill up the interstices of time with drill. 
If Uncle Sam's $20 a month is not pretty gener- 
ally earned, so far, in this brigade, some of us are 
much mistaken. 

The picket service is becoming arduous. The 
pickets are out 48 hours. At many of the stations 
no fire is allowed, and especial vigilance is 
enjoined, so that little sleep can be obtained; and 
with all precautions there is a chance of meeting a 
shot from some of the rebel spies and straggling 
guerrillas who hover around the outer circle of 
our lines. Saturday night a couple of the boys 
in our company were thus fired on. Add to 
these inconveniences the special discomforts of 
rain and deep mud, and picket service becomes 
anything but romantic. 

A sad event occurred on Wednesday on the 
picket line. A corporal of the Fourteenth regi- 
ment while instructing a soldier how to halt and 
cover with his piece any suspected enemy 
approaching the station, fired off his gun, shoot- 
ing the man through the breast. The wound 



76 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

was a terrible one, and I am told the man must 
die. 

I noticed in a letter from the Thirteenth regi- 
ment, printed in the daily Times a week or more 
ago, a statement that but few of the articles sent 
from home for the comfort of sick soldiers ever 
reach them, owing to the fact that the officers 
appropriate them to their own use. There may 
be individual cases of that sort, take the army 
through ; but that such theft from sick men, of 
the things they prize most, is customary down 
here, I do not believe. I know that in the hos- 
pital of the Twelfth the things sent in for the 
soldiers are put to their proper use. I am a fre- 
quent visitor at the hospital and have been glad 
to note the improvements added daily. Its area 
has been enlarged, while the number of patients 
has decreased. It is floored and boarded up on 
the sides. Neat iron bedsteads have been sup- 
plied, and the sick men sleep between sheets fur- 
nished by the Ladies' Relief Association of Wash- 
ington. It is to the credit of Surgeon Ketchum 
that his hospital is comfortable far beyond the 
average. Mr. S. Prentice, of the Committee of 
the Vermonters' Relief Association, Washington, 



AKMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 77 

is a frequent visitor, and brings supplies of needed 
articles. 

The visit of the Committee of the Ladies of 
Burlington, Mrs. Dr. Thayer and Mrs. Piatt, to 
our camp yesterday, accompanied by Mrs. Chit- 
tenden and Dr. Hatch, was a most agreeable sur- 
prise. It was a double pleasure to see faces from 
home, and ladies' faces, which are novelties in 
camp. 

The weather has come off fine, clear and frosty 

after the storm. 

Yours, B. 

XV. 

Thanksgiving Day in Camp. 

Camp Vermont, 
Fairfax Co., Va., Dec. 6, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

One or two noticeable events have broken the 
monotony of our camp life since I wrote you last. 
The first was the departure of three regiments of 
the brigade, which took place ten days ago. The 
order came at 8 o'clock in the evening, and the 
"bully Thirteenth," as its boys delight to call 
themselves, was on the march through our camp 



78 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

at nine, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth following 
with little delay. The Twelfth had orders to 
pack knapsacks and be in readiness to move at a 
moment's notice, and our own camp was all astir 
with the bustle of preparation. The night was 
dark and rainy, and as the other regiments passed 
on the double quick through our camp, their dark 
columns visible only by the light of the camp 
fires, our boys cheering them and they cheering 
lustily in response, the scene was not devoid of 
excitement. Every man in the ranks believed 
that such a sudden night march to the front 
meant immediate action, and the haste and hearty 
shouting showed that the prospect was a welcome 
one. The Twelfth would have gone with equal 
cheerfulness; but the expected order for us to fall 
in did not come. We have remained, doing picket 
duty with the Sixteenth. The service takes about 
all the effective men of each regiment, each going 
on for 48 hours. The marching to and from con- 
sumes the best part of another day, making in 
effect three days' hard duty out of every four. 
As the weather has been cold, and most of the 
boys get little sleep at night while out, they have 
found the duty pretty severe ; but they take it 
for the most part without murmuring. The 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 79 

return of the other regiments, all three of which 
have come back to us, will, however, greatly 
lighten the service hereafter. 

Thanksgiving was the second "big thing" of 
the past fortnight. It was not quite what it would 
have been had the six or seven tons of good 
things sent to different companies from Vermont 
arrived in season ; but it was emphatically a gay 
and festive time. The day was clear, air cool and 
bracing, sunshine bright and invigorating. The 
boys of our company made some fun over their 
Thanksgiving breakfast of hard tack and cold 
beans, but possessed their souls in patience in 
view of the forthcoming feast of fat things, for 
we had heard that our boxes from home were at 
Alexandria, and the wagons had gone for them. 
At 10 o'clock the regiment assembled for service. 
Gov. Holbrook's proclamation was read by Chap- 
lain Brastow, and was followed by an excellent 
Thanksgiving discourse. At its close, Col. Blunt 
addressed the regiment, expressing his thankful- 
ness that he could see around him so many of his 
men in health ; urging an orderly observance of 
the day; and inviting the men to meet the officers 
after dinner on the parade ground for an hour or 
two of social sport and enjoyment. An hour later 



80 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

the teams arrived with but four of the forty big 
boxes expected, and the unwelcome news that 
the rest would not reach Alexandria till the next 
day. Most of the companies were in the same 
predicament. Company I had a big box, and 
made a big dinner, setting the tables in the open 
air, to which they invited the field and staff offi- 
cers. Two or three men of Company C received 
boxes, with as many roast turkeys, which they 
shared liberally with their comrades, so that a 
number of us had Thanksgiving fare, and feasted 
with good cheer and a thousand kind thoughts 
of the homes and friends we left behind us. We 
knew that they were thinking of us at the same 
time. If each thought of affection and good will 
had had visible wings, what a cloud of messen- 
gers would have darkened the air between Ver- 
mont and Virginia that day ! 

At 2 o'clock, the regiment turned out on the 
parade ground. The colonel had procured a foot 
ball. Sides were arranged by the lieutenant 
colonel, and two or three royal games of foot ball 
— most manly of sports, and closest in its 
mimicry of actual warfare — were played. The 
lieutenant colonel, chaplain and other officers, 
mingled in the crowd ; captains took rough-and- 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 81 

tumble overthrows from privates ; shins were 
barked and ankles sprained ; but all was given 
and taken in good part. Many joined in games 
of base ball ; others formed rings and watched the 
friendly contests of the champion wrestlers of the 
different companies ; others laughed at the mean- 
derings of some of their comrades, blindfolded by 
the colonel and set to walk at a mark. It was a 
' 'tall time' ' all round. Nor did it end with daylight. 
In the evening a floor of boards, laid upon the 
ground, furnished a ball room, of which the blue 
arch above was the canopy and the bright moon 
the chandelier. Company C turned out a violin, 
guitar and two flutes for an orchestra ; some 
other company furnished another violin, and a 
grand Thanksgiving ball came off in style. I 
did not notice any satin slippers. The ' 'light fan- 
tastic toe' ' was for the most part clad in ' 'gun- 
boats" as the men call the army shoes, and the 
nearest approach to crinoline was a light blue 
overcoat ; but the list was danced through, from 
country dances to the lancers, and the gay 
assembly did not break up until half-past nine. 

So ended Thanksgiving day proper ; but the 
enjoyment of the bigger portion of the creature 



82 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

comforts sent our company from Vermont is yet 
to come. Oar Thanksgiving boxes came yester- 
day after the regiment had gone out on picket; and 
the few men left behind in camp have been 
sampling some of the more perishable articles, 
though booths of brush and picket fires almost 
extinguished by the snow, are hardly what one 
would choose as surroundings. 

The Thanksgiving dinner of the officers' mess 
of Company C came off to-day, and was a highly 
select and recherche affair. The board was 
spread in the capacious log shanty of Maj. Kings- 
ley and was graced by the presence of the amiable 
wife of Col. Blunt, who has been domiciled in 
camp for a week or two, and of the field and 
staff officers of the Twelfth and the chaplain 
and surgeon of the Fifteenth. I enclose a copy 
of the bill of fare, in the composition of which I 
suspect my editorial brother, of the quarter- 
master's department, had a hand. It was 
engrossed on brown wrapping paper, like the 
Southern newspapers, and every thing on the bill 
was on the board, sumptuous as it may seem. 
The good things said I do not feel at liberty to 
report. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. S3 

BILL OF FARE. 

Shanty de Kingsley. 
THANKSGIVING DINNER. 

Camp Vermont, December 6th, 1862. 
TABLE D'HOTE. 

SOUP. 

Nary. 

ROAST. 

Turkey, Mount Vernon Sauce. 



ENTREES. 

Pate de pullet, Cochon Sauce. 

Fillet de Boeuf— a la smoke. 



RELISHES. 

Butter, Chittenden Co., Kohl Slaw, 

Cheese, Stationary, Chow Chow, 

Salt, ordinaire, ' Sultana Sauce, 

Pepper, a la contraband, Tomato Catsup, 

Pickles, a la confusion, Sauce de Savoy. 

VEGETABLES. 

Potatoes, Hibernian and Carolinian. 
Onions, aux fragantes. 



PASTRY. 

Mince Pie, Apple Pie. 

DESSERT. 

Coffee, Doughnuts, Ginger-Schnapps, 
Sweet Cak,e Fruit Cake, 
Apples, Baldwin. 



84: ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

We have had our second snow storm. It began 
yesterday, and continued through a bitter night. 
Toward night the Thirteenth and Fourteenth 
regiments came in from Union Mills — the Fif- 
teenth came in the night before — and marched 
into their deserted camps, close by us. They 
brought only shelter tents, and the prospect of 
camping down in the snow, with little food, 
no fuel, and scanty shelter, was a pretty black 
one for them, till our officers went over and offered 
the hospitalities of the Twelfth, which were grate- 
fully accepted. The absence of most of our men 
on picket, left a good deal of vacant room in our 
tents, which were soon filled with wet and tired 
men of the other regiments. They went away 
this morning warmed, rested and fed. 

The weather to-day is very cold and I fear that 
our boys on picket will suffer to-night, though 
they will have frozen ground to lie on instead of 
muddy slush, which will be so far an improve- 
ment. 

The health of the regiment continues much 
better than the average of the brigade. 

Sunday Morning, December 9. 

We hear that General Stoughton will assume 
command to-day. The brigade would, how- 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 85 

ever, 1 think, be satisfied to remain under com- 
mand of Colonel Blunt. 
Thermometer only 15 above zero to-day. 

Yours, B. 



XVI. 



The; Brigade moves to Fairfax Court 

House. 

Camp near Fairfax Court House, Va., 
December 15th, 1862. 
Dear Free Press : 

More moves on the big chess board of which 
States and counties are the squares and divisions 
and brigades the pieces. And as the older troops 
push to the front, the reserves, of which the 
Second Vermont brigade is a portion, move up 
and occupy the more advanced positions of the 
lines of defense around Washington, vacated by 
our predecessors. 

General Sigel's division marched to the sup- 
port of Burnside last week, and our brigade has 
stepped into their deserted places. Our five regi- 
ments are now in camp round Fairfax Court 
House and along the line to Centreville, doing 
picket duty on the lines near the latter place. 



86 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

The orders for us to march came on Thursday 
evening last, while the Twelfth was out on picket. 
The boys were ordered in and reached camp 
about 10 o'clock. They came in singing "John 
Brown" and camp was soon humming with the 
bustle and stir of breaking camp. Big fires made 
of the no longer needed packing boxes which 
came from Vermont, were soon blazing in the 
company streets, and the work of packing knap- 
sacks began. With most of the boys the first 
thought was for the creature comforts still remain- 
ing from the Thanksgiving supply, and each man 
proceeded to make sure of some of them, by 
putting himself outside of such a portion as his 
capacity would admit of, be the same more or 
less. It was midnight before the camp was still. 
After two hours or so of slumber we were aroused; 
reveille was sounded at 3; the tents were struck 
at 4; the line of march was formed at 5; and by 
6 the brigade was on its way. The morning was 
a magnificent one, clear, rosy and frost3^, and 
the step of the men was light and springy as they 
filed away. I was on special duty and did not 
accompany the column. At 4 o'clock P. M. the 
Twelfth halted at their present camping ground 
about a mile west of Fairfax Court House, having 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 87 

with the brigade accomplished a march of twenty 
mi/es. Though the pace was moderate and the 
stops frequent, it was altogether the severest 
march as }^et made by our regiment. It is to be 
remembered that in such a march the weight of 
the packed knapsack about doubles the amount 
of exertion. Most soldiers would prefer a march 
of twice the distance in light marching order. 
Our boys marched well, however. But twelve of 
the Twelfth fell to the rear — a proportion of strag- 
glers less, as I am told, than that of any of the 
other regiments. Of Company C, one man, just 
convalescent from a three weeks' run of fever, 
who should not have attempted to march at all, 
was takeu up by one of the ambulances. Another 
man who had been off duty from ill health came 
in with the stragglers ; the rest, to a man, 
marched into our present camp with the colors. 

I returned to Camp Vermont the day after. 
The Third brigade of Casey's division was 
already installed in the winter quarters built with 
so much labor by the Vermont regiments. The 
Fourth Delaware was in the camp of the Twelfth, 
and a new order of things was in force. The 
quiet and discipline of the Vermont camps had 
disappeared. Muskets were popping promis- 



88 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

cuously all around the camps ; much petty thiev- 
ing appeared to be on foot ; and Mr. Mason, the 
gray headed "neutral" who owns the manor, was 
praying for the return of the Vermont brigade. 
His fences were lowering with remarkable rapid- 
ity; the roofs of some of his out-houses had quite 
disappeared, and Colonel Grimshaw, command- 
ing the brigade, had his headquarters in the front 
parlor of his mansion. I could not give him a 
great deal of sympathy, for I believe him to be a 
rebel; but I was glad the spoliation was not the 
work of our Vermont boys. 

I followed the regiment on Sunday, taking the 
military railroad train to Fairfax Station. Here, 
and all along the road to the dirty little village 
of Fairfax Court House, four miles to the north, 
I struck the column of an army corps pushing 
on to the front. Here a drove of beef cattle ; 
next a battery of Parrot guns ; there a travel- 
worn regiment, marching with tired lag and fre- 
quent hunching up of their heavy knapsacks ; 
then one resting by the wayside ; then a battery 
of brass twenty-pounders ; then another regiment 
and another ; and long white lines of army 
wagons filling every vacant rod of road for miles 
and miles as far as the eye could reach. It was 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 89 

the rear of the Twelfth Army Corps, from Har- 
per's Ferry and Frederick, en route for Dumfries 
to be in supporting distance of Burnside; and for 
over twenty hours the stream of men and mate- 
rial of war had flowed over the road in the same 
way. It is only after seeing such a movement 
that one begins to realize something of the size 
of the business which is now the occupation of 
the nation. 

I turned from the road across the fields to a 
pine grove in which lay the camp of the Twelfth. 
The regiment was drawn up in square at the edge 
of the timber. As I drew near, the strains of 
"Shining Shore" broke the stillness, and as I 
joined the body, the men were standing with 
bared heads, as the chaplain invoked the bless- 
ing of God on our cause, on our fellow soldiers 
now perhaps in deadly fight,* on our own humble 
efforts, and on the homes we left to come to the 
war. It was a transition, in a step, from the 
strong rush of the tide of war to a quiet eddy of 
Christian worship, and the contrast was a strik- 
ing one. 

*Gen. Burnside was now in command of the Army of the Poto- 
mac, and having fought the disastrous battle of Fredericksburg, 
Dec. 13, was now about to recross the Rappahannock. 



DO ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

We are at present under shelter tents, pitched 
promiscuously among the pine trees. The weather 
is mild and fine, and the ground as dry as May. 
We can hardly realize that it is the middle of 
December. How long we shall remain here, of 
course we do not know. 

A new brigade band of seventeen pieces has 
been organized under the leadership of Mr. 
Clark of St. Johnsbury, whose concerts in Bur- 
lington you doubtless remember. The music for 
dress parade to-night was furnished by the band 
and was a decidedly attractive feature. 

Our new Brigadier General, Stoughton, came 
and took command a week ago yesterday, and 
Colonel Blunt has returned to the command of 
the Twelfth. During his absence Lieut. Colonel 
Farnham has shown every quality of an efficient 
and courteous regimental commander. 

We are waiting with intense interest for news 
of the results of the movements on Richmond. 
Providence seems to be smiling on us, in this fine 
weather, and we cannot doubt the triumph of our 
arms. If between Burnside and Banks the rebel 
capital cannot be taken, who shall next attempt 
the job ? 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 91 

P. S. The rain has come before our tents have, 
and a juicy time is in progress. 

Yours, B. 



XVII. 
Picket Duty on Cub Run. 

Picket Camp, Centreville, Va., 
December 19th, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

The main camp of our brigade is at Fairfax 
Court House, eight miles back of here. From 
thence a regiment is sent every four days to picket 
the lines in this vicinity. The turn of the 
Twelfth came day before yesterday. We started 
at 7.30 A. M., with two days' rations in our hav- 
ersacks, and were marched briskly hither over the 
Centreville turnpike, which has been so often 
filled with the columns of the army of the Poto- 
mac, in advance or in retreat. The skeletons of 
horses and mules, left to rot as they fell, were 
frequent ornaments of the highway, and the 
remains of knapsacks, bayonet sheaths, and here 
and there a broken musket, strewn along the 
road, told the story of strife and disaster in 
months and years gone by. Three hours brought 



92 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

us to the highlands of Centreville, covered with 
forts, eight of which are in sight from this camp, 
connected by miles of the rebel riflepits which 
kept McClellan so long at bay during the impa- 
tient months of last winter. One of the famous 
"quaker" guns lies near our camp. 

The regiment halted here, and the right wing 
was at once despatched to the picket lines, Com- 
pany C, under command of Lieutenant Wing, 
forming a portion of the detachment. Three miles 
of sharp marching across" the fields, over a sur- 
face seamed with ditches and covered with a 
little low vine which tries its best to trip up the 
traveller, brought us, about noon, to the picket 
lines; and the men were at once distributed to the 
stations, to relieve the men of the Sixteenth reg- 
iment, who for four days had kept watch and 
ward on the line. The space allotted to Com- 
pany C extended along the turbid stream of Cub 
Run, from a point near its junction with Bull 
Run, up to and beyond the ford and bridge 
where "Fighting Dick" Richardson opened the 
first battle of Bull Run, July 18th, 1861. Back 
from the stream a little are the camps of three 
Georgia and Kentucky regiments and a bat- 
tery of rebel artillery, which wintered here last 



ARMY LIFE "iN VIRGINIA. 93 

winter. The huts are of logs plastered with mud, 
with shed roofs of long split shingles or of poles 
covered with clay, each having a small aperture 
for a window, and capacious fire place and chim- 
ney of stone and mud masonry. They are a 
portion of the famous hut camps of Beauregard's 
army, which cover the desirable camping spots 
for many a mile around, in which the rebel army 
spent a comfortable winter, while our army was 
shivering in tents. Our reserves are now posted 
in them — a picket reserve, as you know, is a 
body of 15 or 20 men, on which the pickets fall 
back for support if attacked, and from which men 
are sent at intervals to relieve the men on the 
lines — and we find them warm and comfortable 
shelter on these cold nights. 

Let me describe to you a day and night of 
picket duty. We were stationed within hailing 
distance of each other, one man at a station for 
the most part, but sometimes two or three 
together at posts requiring especial vigilance, 
along the eastern bank of Cub Run, a small 
stream, a rod or two wide, which for the present 
is the boundary of Uncle Sam's absolute control. 
Beyond it is debatable ground, a cavalry patrol 
of the First Virginia (loyal) cavalry, and occa- 



94 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

sional reconnoitering expeditions, alone disputing 
its possession with the enemy. A cavalry 
vidette is posted on the Gainesville road, and a 
patrol is sent out daily over the road for four or 
five miles. 

We took our posts, in a flurry of snow, at noon. 
Each man's thought was first of his fire and next 
of his dinner. The nearest fence or brush-heap 
furnishes the means of replenishing the one, the 
haversack supplies the other. From its depths 
the picket produces a tin plate, a piece of raw 
pork, a paper of ground coffee, and a supply of 
hard tack. If inclined for a warm meal, he 
cuts a slice or two of his pork and fries it on his 
plate, if less fastidious, he takes it raw with 
his hard bread. His cup is filled from his can- 
teen and placed on the fire, and a cup of coffee is 
soon steaming under his nose. With such mate- 
rials, and the appetite gained by a march of a 
dozen miles, a ro} T al meal is soon made. 

The afternoon passed with little incident. At 
my station I had a solitary visitor, a gaunt and 
yellow F. F. V., who came to say that he was 
anxious to save the rails he had "left, around his 
cattle yard, and rather than have them burned 
he would draw some wood for the pickets — a sug- 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 05 

gestion which found favor with our boys, and the 
old fellow found occupation enough for himself, 
boy and yoke of oxen, for a good share of the 
day, hauling wood to the stations. He said he 
was a Virginian born, owned a farm of 150 acres, 
had no apples and no orchard to raise any with, 
no potatoes either, nothing that a soldier would 
eat except corn meal, and couldn't sell any of 
that, as his supply was small and he could not 
cross the picket line to mill; had never taken the 
oath of allegiance nor been asked to take it; was 
a peaceable man himself, and meant to keep 
friends with the soldiers the best way he knew 
how; found some good men and some hard fel- 
lows among them on both sides; had lost a great 
deal by the war; but felt most the loss of his 
horses, which he said were taken from his stable 
while he was sick by some Union soldiers; had 
no slaves nor anybody to help him but his boy; 
had no gun of any description and never owned 
one; was glad to believe the war could not last 
forever, and only hoped it would be over in time 
to leave him some of his fences and timber. 

At our reserve station, in the old rebel artillery 
camp, some stir was occasioned by a colored indi- 
vidual, one of a family of free negroes who own 



96 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

a fine farm of 400 acres just across the Run, who 
came in to say that a man believed to be a secesh 
soldier dressed in citizen's clothes, had just been 
at his house and made inquiries as to the number 
and position of our pickets. Lieutenant Wing 
at once started out with two or three men, saw 
the fellow making tracks for the woods, and gave 
chase. He gained the timber, however, and made 
good his escape. As such a search for informa- 
tion might be preliminary to a rebel dash on our 
picket line, the affair had a tendency to put our 
men on the alert. Further down the line the men 
of another company, while scouting round a farm- 
house, discovered in the barn a suspicious look- 
ing box, which, when opened, disclosed within a 
metallic burial case, containing a corpse, which 
the family there averred to be the body of a 
Southern officer, which was left there on the 
retreat of the rebel army last March, with direc- 
tions to keep it until it should be sent for. But 
it had not been sent for and perhaps never will 
be. 

The night settled down clear and very cold. — 
With the darkness came orders to put out the 
picket fires or keep them smouldering without 
flame. Your humble servant was stationed on 



ARM\ LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 97 

the bank of Cub Run , opposite a rude foot bridge 
thrown across the stream. My turns of duty 
were from 4 to 8 and 10 to 12 P. M., and from 2 
to 4 and 6 to 8 A. M. The stars shone bright; 
but there was little else to see. The stream rip- 
pled away with constant murmur and the wind 
sighed and rustled through the trees; but there 
was little else to hear, till about midnight, when 
the reports of fire arms came from the direction 
of the cavalry vidette, further out on the battle- 
field, two or three miles away, and shortly after 
a sound of the clatter of hoofs on the frozen 
ground. The sound died away and the night 
was still as before. When I was relieved and 
returned to the reserve, the fires were burning 
brightly in the wide fire places, and seated around 
we told stories and cracked jokes, and discussed 
the campaign, and wondered where Banks had 
gone. Suddenly a hasty step is heard without, 
and one of the pickets puts in his head at the 
door to announce that men are moving on the 
opposite bank of the stream. While he is talk- 
ing, bang goes a musket from our line to the left, 
and then another. Something is going on, or 
else somebody is unnecessarily excited. We 
seize our pieces, and hurry down to the ford, close 



98 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

by, where if anywhere a rebel party would prob- 
ably attempt a crossing, and are not quieted by 
hearing in a whisper from the three trusty men 
stationed there, that a small party of men had 
just come stealthily along the opposite bank, 
stopped at the ford, discussed in a low tone the 
expediency of crossing, and then, disturbed by 
the firing and stir down our line to the left, had 
hastily retired. 

Our boys kept quiet, for the comers were invis- 
ible in the shadow of the opposite bank; had 
they stepped into the water they would have 
been fired on. Of course they might return and 
more with them, and dropping low, so as to get 
a sight against the star-lit horizon, we awaited 
developments. A hostile body attempting the 
crossing about there would have met the contents 
of fifteen rifled muskets, tolerably well aimed. 
But no more sound was heard, and the reserve 
returned to their post. A sergeant and two men, 
sent down the line, had in the meantime discov- 
ered that the shots heard were fired by two of our 
sentinels, who hearing a movement in the bushes 
across the run, had fired at random. I returned 
to my sentry post, but there was no more alarm. 
I saw the big dipper in the North tip up so that 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 99 

its contents, be they of water, or milk from the 
milky way, must have run out over the handle. 
I saw the triple- studded belt of Orion pass across 
the sky. I saw two meteors shoot along the 
horizon, and that was all the shooting. I saw 
the old moon, wasted to a slender crescent, come 
up in the east. I saw the sun rise very red in 
the face at the thought that he had overslept 
himself till half past seven, on such a glorious 
morning. I heard a song bird or two piping 
sweetly from the woods; but I neither saw nor 
heard any rebels. With daylight, however, a 
Union cavalry man, on foot, bareheaded, with 
scratched face and eyes still wild with fright, 
came to our line and told a story which explained 
the alarm of the midnight. The cavalry vidette, 
sixteen in number, of which he was one, posted 
out some three or four miles, while sleep- 
ing around their fires had been charged into by 
a party of White's rebel cavalry, who captured 
all their horses and seven or eight of their num- 
ber; the rest scattered into the bush in all direc- 
tions, and it was doubtless some of them trying 
to make their way into Centreville, who created 
the alarm along our line, and came so near being 
fired on by our men at the ford. 



100 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

December 20. 

I hear this morning that the infantry pickets 
are to be withdrawn from the line along Cub 
Run, letting cavalry take their places, and that 
we shall go into the redoubt close by, to-day, to 
be relieved, I suppose, to-morrow, by another 
regiment of the brigade. A grand review of the 
other four regiments by General Stoughton took 
place yesterday at Fairfax Court House. 

Yours, B. 



XVIII. 

Christmas in Camp. 

Camp near Fairfax C. H., 
December 26, 1862. 
Dear Free Press: 

We have had a very fair Christmas in camp. 
The day was as mild as May. By hard work the 
day before our mess had "stockaded" our tent and 
it is now a little log house with a canvas roof. 
We have in it a "California stove" — a sheet of 
iron over a square hole in the ground — and as we 
have been confined of late to rations of hard tack 
and salt pork, we decided to have a special 
Christmas dinner. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 101 

We got some excellent oysters of the sutler, 
also some potatoes. Two of the boys went off to 
a clean, free-negro family, about a mile off, and 
got two quarts of rich milk, some hickory nuts, 
and some dried peaches. I officiated as cook, 
and, as all agreed, got up a capital dinner. I 
made as good an oyster soup as one often gets, 
and fried some oysters with bread crumbs — for 
we are the fortunate owners of a frying-pan. 
The potatoes were boiled in a tin pan, and were 
as mealy as any I ever ate. We had, besides, 
good Vermont butter, boiled pork, good bread, 
and closed a luxurious meal with nuts, raisins 
and apples, and cocoa-nut cakes just sent from 
home. For supper we had rice and milk and 
stewed plums. Now that is not such bad living 
for poor soldiers, is it? But we do not have it 
every day ; though we have had many luxuries 
since our Thanksgiving boxes came. 

We have a pleasant camp ground just now, 
and if allowed to remain, shall make ourselves 
quite comfortable. 

We had a visit from Dr. Thayer in our tent to- 
night. It was good for sore eyes to see the 
doctor and hear directly from home ; and he will 



102 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

tell you when he gets back that he found here a 
right hearty looking set of fellows. 

December 27th. 
We are in quite a stir to-night. Cannonading 
has been heard to the south all the afternoon* 
and we are under orders to be ready to march at 
a moment's notice, with one day's cooked rations. 
It is rumored that we are to be ordered forward 
in course of a week, anyhow. 

Yours, B. 



XIX. 

Stuart's Raid and Repulse from Fairfax 
Court House. 

Camp Near Fairfax C. H., Va., 
December 29, 1862. 

Dear Free Press : 

We have been having rather stirring times dur- 
ing the past twenty-four hours. During the day 
on Sunday, rumors of a sharp engagement at 
Dumfries, twenty-five miles south of us, and the 
hurrying forward of troops to points threatened, 

*This was the first engagement of Stuart's raid, being his attack 
upon Dumfries, Va., and repulse by the garrison. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 103 

reached us, and prepared us for a start. Just at 
night-fall came the command to fall in. Col. 
Blunt was absent at Alexandria, in attendance on 
a court martial, and Lieut. Col. Farnham was in 
command, by whom we were marched hastily to 
Fairfax Court House. The Thirteenth and Four- 
teenth Vermont regiments and the Second Con- 
necticut battery, attached to our brigade, moved 
with us. We were hurried straight through the 
village, and it was not until we halted behind a 
long breastwork, commanding the sweep of plain 
to the east, that we had time to ask ourselves 
what it all meant. The word was soon passed 
about that a formidable rebel raid was in progress ; 
that a large rebel cavalry force was approaching 
Burke's Station, four or five miles below us ; 
that an attack on Fairfax Court House was antic- 
ipated, and that Gen. Stoughton with the Ver- 
mont brigade must hold the position. Three reg- 
iments and three guns of the battery were to 
defend the village ; the Fifteenth was at Centre- 
ville on picket, and the Sixteenth, with three 
guns, was sent to Fairfax Station. 

The Twelfth manned the centre of the breast- 
work, extending across the Alexandria turnpike, 
along which the enemy was expected to advance. 



104 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

Two companies of the Thirteenth and a portion 
of the Fourteenth were placed on our right ; the 
remainder of the Thirteenth on our left, and the 
balance of the Fourteenth a short distance in our 
rear. A brass howitzer and two rifled pieces 
were placed on the turnpike. Companies B and G 
of the Twelfth, under command of Captain Paul, 
were sent forward half a mile on the road, and a 
squad of the First Virginia (union) cavalry was 
placed still further out. 

So arranged, we waited hour after hour of the 
bright moonlight night. Occasionally a mounted 
orderly dashed up to Gen. Stoughton with 
accounts of the rebel advance, but nothing spec- 
ially exciting took place till about eleven, when 
suddenly the situation became interesting. First 
came a courier with a message for Gen. Stough- 
ton, whose reply, distinctly audible to our por- 
tion of the line, was : ' 'Tell him my communica- 
tion with Gen . Abercrombie is cut off ; but I can 
hold my own here, and will do it." Then came 
orders to load, and instructions for the front rank, 
— your humble servant was fortunate enough 
to be in that rank — to do the firing, if ordered 
to fire, and the rear rank to do the loading, passing 
the loaded pieces to their file leaders. Then 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 105 

came a dash of horsemen down the road, riding 
helter-skelter and "the devil take the hindmost." 
We did not know then what it meant, but learned 
afterwards that it was the cavalry picket, driven 
in and frightened half to death by the rebels. 
The stir among our officers which followed told 
us, however, that it meant something. Col. 
Farnham rode along the line, giving the men 
their instructions. Major Kingsley added some 
words of caution and injunctions to fire low, and 
General Stoughton, riding up, said: "You are to 
hold this entrenchment, my men. Keep cool, 
never flinch, and behave worthy of the good 
name won for Vermont troops by the First brig- 
ade. File closers, do your duty, and if any man 
attempts to run, use your bayonets!" The cap- 
tains, each in his own way, added their encour- 
agements. The men on their part needed no 
incentive; and I have no doubt, had its possession 
been contested, that breastwork would have been 
held in a way which would have brought no dis- 
grace on our Green Mountain State. 

We had waited in silence a few minutes, when 
our ears caught a faint tramp of cavalry, half a 
mile away where our skirmishers were posted; 
then some scattered pistol shots ; then shrill 



106 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

cheers as of a cavalry squadron on a charge; and 
then the flash and rattle of the first hostile volley 
fired by any portion of the Twelfth in this war. 
It was a splendid volley, too. Both companies 
fired at once, and their guns went off like one 
piece. The effects of the volley were not learned 
till daylight ; but I may as well anticipate my 
story, and give them here. They were eight rebel 
troopers wounded and removed by their com- 
rades — this our men learned from a man in front 
of whose house, a little ways on, the rebels rallied 
— three horses killed; three saddles, a rebel car- 
bine, manufactured in Richmond, and a Colt's 
revolver, picked up on the ground; and a horse, 
with U. S. on his flank, found riderless in the 
road and recaptured. The rebel troopers scat- 
tered in all directions but rallied further back. 
Our men expected a second charge, and were 
ready for it, but after a short halt the rebels 
turned and rapidly retreated. 

At the breastwork we knew nothing of these 
details. We heard the firing, and taking it for 
the opening drops of the shower waited patiently 
for what should come next. Nothing came, how- 
ever. All was still again. In half an hour camp 
fires began to show themselves about a mile in 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 107 

front, and our artillery was ordered to try its 
hand on them. Bang went the guns, under our 
noses, and whiz went the shells, but they drew no 
response. A reconnoissance was next ordered. 
Capt. Ormsbee of Co. G — one of our best cap- 
tains — with 30 men of his own and Company B 
marched over to the fires. They were found to 
be fires of brush built to deceive us. A free 
negro, whose house was near by, in formed Capt. O. 
that the rebels were under command of Generals 
Fitzhugh L,ee and Stuart, both of whom had 
been in his house an hour before. 

They had, he said, two brigades of cavalry and 
some artillery, and they had pushed on to the 
north. This news was taken to mean that they 
were making a circuit and would probably shortly 
attack from the north or west. We were accord- 
ingly double-quicked back to Fairfax Court 
House, and were posted (I speak now only of the 
Twelfth) on the brow of a hill, in good position 
to receive a charge of cavalry. Here we waited 
through the rest of the night. The moon set ; 
the air grew cold ; the ground froze under our 
feet ; but we had nothing to do but to shiver 
and nod over our guns, till daylight. At sun- 
rise we were glad to be marched back to camp, 



108 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

and to throw ourselves into our tents, where most 
of the men have slept through the day, taking 
rest while they can get it, for we are still ordered 
to be in readiness for instant marching. I doubt 
if we shall go out to-night, however. We hear 
to-day that the rebel cavalry, having made one 
of the most daring raids of the war, to within a 
dozen miles of Washington, have pushed on to 
Lyeesburg,* and will doubtless make a successful 
escape through the mountains. 

I have given so much space to this little 
skirmish because it is the thing of greatest excite- 
ment with us at present, and not, of course, for its 
essential importance. But it has been an interest- 
ing bit of experience and not without value in its 
effect upon the discipline of the brigade. It has 
added to the confidence of the men in their offi- 
cers, from Gen. Stoughton down, and I guess 
the men did not disappoint their commanders. 
To-day our colonel is again with us. He started 
with the adjutant to join the regiment last night 
by way of the turnpike, which was then held for 
two miles or more by the rebels, but was advised 
by Capt. Erhardt, in command of a squadron of 

*This was erroneous. Stuart returned by way of Warrenton to 
Culpeper Court House. 



AEMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 109 

the Vermont cavalry at Annandale, not to attempt 
to go through, and wisely took his advice. It 
would have been sorrow for us had he been taken 
by Stuart's troopers. 

December 30th. 

We have spent an undisturbed night, and I 
have time this morning to add one or two more 
particulars of the affair of night before last. Our 
pickets have taken four or five prisoners of the 
rebel cavalry. One was a hard looking, butternut- 
clad trooper, apparently just recovering from a 
bad spree ; he accounted for his used up appear- 
ance by averring that they had been six days in 
the saddle. The others were taken by the Ver- 
mont cavalry, and will go part way toward bal- 
ancing the loss of Ivieut. Cummings of Company 
D of the Vermont cavalry and three of his men , 
who were out on picket and were taken by 
Stuart's men. It is ascertained that the forces of 
Stuart and Fitzhugh L,ee made a circuit around 
us, passing between us and Washington and 
round to Chantilly on the west of us, where a 
body of 300 cavalry, including a portion of the 
Vermont cavalry, from Drainsville, came upon 
them ; but finding themselves in the presence of a 



110 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

greatly superior force, retreated. It was reported 
in Washington, and fully believed by many, that 
our whole brigade had been captured. 

Reinforcements have now been sent out to our 
support, and we anticipate no serious danger. 
Still affairs are in a rather feverish state, and we 
may be marched in any direction at any moment. 

The weather is remarkable — days very mild, 
with magnificent sunshine ; nights cooler, but 
still not much like Vermont. 

Yours, B. 



XX. 



The New Year and the Emancipation 
Proclamation. 

Camp near Fairfax C. H., Va., 
January 10, 1863. 
Dear Free Press : 

I must alter the 62 I have written by force of a 
twelve mouth's habit, to 63 — which reminds me 
that the old year has been made into the new 
since I wrote you last. The old year has taken 
with him three months of our term of service. 
We cannot hope that the coming months will deal 
with us as gently as have the past. Rough as 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. Ill 

portions of our army life have been, we have 
thus far seen but little of the roughest part of 
war. But it must come, though its approach is 
so gradual that we hardly perceive it. From the 
security of our camp of instruction on Capitol 
Hill we passed to the more arduous duties of 
work on iutrenchments and picket service, at 
Camp Vermont. We exchanged that for our 
present more exposed position, where picket duty 
means watch for rebel cavalry, and where some 
of us have met and drawn trigger on the enemy. 
In time, no doubt, will come the still harder 
experience of protracted marches, of the shock of 
battle, of wounds and capture and death for some 
of us. More than this, the war as a whole is to 
be more desperate and deadly in future, because 
waged with a foe maddened by privations and 
loss of property, and especially by the President's 
Proclamation of Freedom. We have already 
ceased to hear much talk about ' 'playing at war." 
It is owned to be work and pretty earnest work, 
now; and if it grows hotter as a whole, it will of 
course be the harder in its parts. But come what 
will, I for one — and I believe I am one of many 
thousand such— shall "endure hardness" more 
cheerfully, and fight, when called to, more heart- 



112 AKMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

ily, because Freedom has been proclaimed 
throughout the land for whose unity and welfare 
we struggle, though its full accomplishment may 
cost years of trial and trouble. 

Our present camp is on a pleasant slope, 
stretching out to the south-east to a broad campus 
on which take place the brigade drills to which 
General Stoughton treats the brigade almost 
daily. In the rear, the lines of tents extend into 
a fine grove of pines which kindly protect us 
from all winds but the east. A brook near by on 
our left, affords us water. A regimental order 
forbids the cutting of trees within 200 yards of 
the camp, and ensures to us the protection of our 
tall evergreens. The ground has been cleared 
and leveled, and the underbrush cut away from 
under the trees. On the whole, it is the pleas- 
antest spot we have as yet occupied, and if we must 
spend the winter in this region, we shall be con- 
tent to spend it here. The colonel and his staff 
have had their tents surrounded by sides of split 
logs with fire-places and chimneys of brick, and 
the men have raised their tents on stockades of 
logs, which detract somewhat from the appear- 
ance of the company streets, for it is impossible 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 113 

to give to a row of little log huts, plastered with 
mud, the neat appearance of a line of tents. 

Our camp is graced by the presence of the 
accomplished wives of Colonel Blunt, Lieut. 
Colonel Farnham and Captain Ormsbee, who 
interest themselves in the hospitals and sick men , 
and give to us all, in a measure, the refining 
influence of woman's presence, without which 
any collection of men becomes more or less of 
a bear garden. 

The time of the regiment, at present, is mainly 
devoted to drill, with occasional episodes of picket 
duty; and we are on the whole making marked 
progress in discipline and drill. General Stough- 
ton, in a general order issued a day or two since, 
declares that in these respects this brigade 
already compares well with the troops of other 
States, around us. 

January 12. 

My letter was interrupted by an order which 
sent the right wing of the Twelfth out on picket 
duty at Chantilly. The twenty -four hours did 
not pass without some incidents, which, if they 
were the first of their kind, might deserve men- 
tion; but having already given you some idea of 
picket duty here, I let them pass. 



114 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

We are enjoying, this evening, a visit from our 
friend, and fellow-townsman to many of us, J. A. 
Shedd. Yours, B. 



XXI. 

Return After a Furlough. 

Camp near Wolf Run Shoals, Va., 
February 7, 1863.* 

Dear Free Press: 

Once more in camp ! For your humble ser- 
vant, after eighteen days' absence on furlough, 
the change is from the snows of Vermont to the 
mud of Virginia ; from the peace and comfort of 
New England homes to the insecurity and deso- 
lation of this part of the field of war; from sleep- 
ing between sheets and eating at tables and 
other luxuries of civilization, to tent life and 
camp fare. For the Twelfth, also, the change 
within the three weeks past is not a slight one. 
It has exchanged the broad stretches and open 
region of Fairfax Court House, for a rough and 

♦During the month preceding this date, the writer was promoted 
to a vacant lieutenancy, and received a furlough for twenty days, to 
enable him to return to Vermont, whither he was called by his duties 
as President of the Vermont and Boston Telegraph Co., Postmaster 
of Burlington, and editor of the Free Press. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 115 

broken country, wooded with scrub oaks and 
second growth pines growing on worn out 
tobacco fields, and scantily peopled with scat- 
tered "secesh" farmers. Near us, several hundred 
feet below the level of our camps, runs the Occo- 
quan river, a muddy stream about as large as 
the Winooski. Across it, on the heights beyond, 
are earthworks thrown up by Beauregard's sol- 
diers last winter, now untenanted. 

Our camp is on a knoll from which the men 
have cleared the pine trees. It is much narrower 
in its limits than our former fine camp near 
Fairfax, and it is less attractive in almost every 
particular. 

The first battalion drill since the regiment left 
Camp Fairfax, came off to-day. The men have 
had all they could do in digging rifle pits, picket 
duty, constructing corduroy roads, — of which 
they have made miles between this and Fairfax 
Station, — and the labor of clearing and making 
camp; and between rain and snow and mud have 
had the roughest time they have as yet known. 
Their spirits are good, however, and as I write, 
the music of a guitar and violin and well attuned 
manly voices, serenading the ladies whose pres- 
ence in camp I have heretofore mentioned, reaches 



116 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

me on the evening air, and tells of light hearts 
and good cheer. 

Quartermaster Sergeant George H. Bigelow 
has been appointed first lieutenant in Company 
B, and detailed as quartermaster of the regiment, 
and private George I. Hagar, of Company C, has 
been made sergeant major of the regiment, in 
place of Sergeant Major Redington, promoted. 

February 14. 
The Twelfth and Thirteenth regiments have 
here nearly ten miles of picket line to guard. 
There have been skirmishes between the cavalry 
outposts, sights of rebel patrols, and rumors of 
coming attack from rebel cavalry, enough to keep 
us somewhat on the alert; but the long roll has 
not sounded, nor has hostile shot been fired by 
us. Colonel Blunt has been practicing the men 
at target firing, and the}- are making sensible 
progress in the modern method of administering 
the "blue pills" which are the only cure for 
rebellion. Yesterday and the day before, fatigue 
parties crossed the river and destroyed the earth- 
works on the heights commanding our camps; 
but while the roads are in their present condition 
we can hardly be in great danger from rebel 
artillery. The mud in the roads, where they are 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 117 

not corduroyed .varies from deep to bottomless, and 
the rains are frequent enough to keep the roads 
from settling. A week of sunshine, however, 
would again enable armies to move. 

The weather is quite mild. It is raining as I 
write, with the thermometer at 58 , and the 
mercury has been as high as 70 in the sunshine 
in our camp during the past week. The back- 
bone of the winter, if not of the rebellion, is 
broken in this region. We shall probably not 
have more than one more right cold spell, and 
shall henceforth expect much warm weather. 

The health of the regiment has improved and 
may now be called pretty good, though many of 
us suffer from the disturbing effect of the water, 
which is not as good here as we have found in 
our former camps. Company C is called the 
healthiest company in the regiment. 

The Second Vermont brigade is now, as you 
know, a portion of the Twenty-second Army 
Corps,— heretofore called the Reserve Corps, 
Defences of Washington— under command of 
Major General Heintzleman, and the Twelfth and 
Thirteenth Vermont are on the outer line of the 
new "Department of Washington." 

Yours, B. 



118 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

XXII. 

More Snow Storms. 

Camp near Wolf Run Shoals, Va., 

February 22, 1863. 

Dear Free Press : 

I beg leave to withdraw my opinion that the 
back-bone of the winter if not of the rebellion 
was broken, in this region. The time is coming, 
undoubtedly, when both will be shattered; but at 
present the dorsal columns of the season and of 
secession are not fractured — distinctly not. lam 
writing in the midst of the hardest snow storm 
we have seen in Virginia, and one that would not 
disgrace the bleakest hillside in Old Vermont. The 
diary of the weather for six days past may be 
interesting as a sample of a Virginia winter : 
Tuesday, a fall of from ten to twelve inches of 
heavy snow. Wednesday, snow settling fast, and 
affording material for some tall snow-balling in 
the afternoon. {Mem. The left wing led by 
Company C, after a hot battle with' the right 
wing, rallied for a charge, engaged them at half 
pop-gun range and drove them into their entrench- 
ments; — casualties, two bloody noses and three 
or four contused eyes from percussion snow balls. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 119 

N. B. Wounded all doing well.] Thursday, 
pouring rain, which carried off the remainder of 
the snow. Friday, high wind, drying the mud 
rapidly. Saturday, warm, bright sunshine, — air 
like May ; bluebirds and robins singing, men 
all out "policing" up the quarters and camp, and 
enjoying the sweet breath of spring. Sunday 
opens dark and cold, with a heavy storm of fine 
dry snow falling at the rate of an inch an hour, 
drifted as it falls by a cutting east wind, and 
closes at nightfall with not much short of eight- 
een inches of snow on a level, and promise of a 
cold snap of several days' duration. 

Picket service is decidedly rough at such a 
time, and some mothers' hearts I know of would 
ache could they see their boys out on the picket 
line, cowering under their booths of pine branches 
through which the snow and wind find easy 
entrance, and holding their wet and chilled hands 
and feet to the fires which struggle for mastery 
with the storm and at best can only avail to sur- 
round them with circles of sposh and mud. 
But we keep up good heart amid sun or storm, 
and before this reaches the eyes of our friends, 
sunshine and mild weather will have returned to 
us. 



120 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

It may be thought, perhaps, that there is no 
need of keeping men out on picket at such a 
time; but our surroundings here have taught us 
that constant vigilance, by night and day in all 
weathers, is the price of safety. We are in the 
enemy's country , if it is but twenty -five miles 
from Washington. The inhabitants of this region 
are all "secesh." As wherever we have been in 
Virginia, the young and able bodied men are all 
gone. The old men are just quiet and civil 
enough when in the presence of our soldiers to 
keep themselves from arrest; but render what aid 
and comfort they give to any one, to the other 
side. The women are "j/^cesh" without excep- 
tion; the little girls sing rebel songs, and the hoop- 
less, dirty and illiterate j-oung ladies of these F. 
F. V.'s boast that their brothers and sweethearts 
are in the rebel army, and chuckle over the time 
coming, when the roads settle, when Stonewall 
Jackson will rout us out of here in a hurry. One 
or two skirmishes of the Michigan cavalry with 
White's rebel cavalry have occurred near us 
recently, in one of which our side lost fifteen 
men, and a cavalry picket was cut off but two 
days ago within three miles of our camp. Our 
position at this post is, however, a tolerably 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 121 

strong one; we have here, with our two regi- 
ments, the Third Connecticut battery, Captain 
Sterling, six brass guns manned by a fine set of 
fellows; and we are now connected by telegraph 
with Fairfax Station and Washington, so that 
reinforcements could be quickly sent out if we 
should be attacked. I think we could make a 
stout fight by ourselves if necessary, and hold 
the post against a much superior force. 

I was about to submit some patriotic eonsider- 
tions in view of the fact that this is Washington's 
birthday, but I spare you. 

The regiment has sustained a serious loss in 
the resignation of Captain L,andon of the Rut- 
land company, who has been compelled by busi- 
ness interests to retire from the service. He was 
an excellent officer and will be much missed by 
his brother officers. 

Our new assistant surgeon, Dr. Ross, has 
arrived and entered upon his duties. 

Yours, B. 



122 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

XXIII. 

The Capture of General Stoughton. 

Camp near Wolf Run Shoals, Va., 
March 8, 1863. 

Dear Free Press : 

The Twelfth is now in the seventh week of its 
occupancy of its present camp, — a longer stay in 
one spot than it has yet made. We have formed 
no such intense attachment to our camp at the 
Shoals that we shall not be pretty well content 
to leave it, wherever we may be ordered. The 
region about us is a dreary one; the camp is less 
pleasant than our former ones; the time we have 
thus far spent in it has been during the most try- 
ing season of the year; snow, rain, frost and 
mud have told on the health of the regiment, 
and we have more sickness than ever before, 
among both officers and men; our picket duty — 
in pleasant weather the pleasantest duty of the 
soldier — has been severe ; and though our situa- 
tion here might be worse in a thousand particu- 
lars, we should all be satisfied to run the risk of 
not bettering our condition by a move. 

You are not to understand that we are dis- 
heartened—not at all. "The Red, White and 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 123 

Blue, "sung by an extemporized quartette, with a 
stiff chorus of manly voices, coming to my ear 
as I write, tells a different story from that. We 
carry a stiff upper lip under all circumstances. 
About a tenth of the regiment are off duty from 
measles, fevers, and ailments of one sort or 
another. The balance are, I think, more reso- 
lute in the great purpose of the war than ever. 
"There is more fight in me," said one of our 
men yesterday, "than ever before. I supposed 
when I enlisted that nine months in the service 
would give me enough of war, and I remained of 
that opinion till quite lately. Now I am in for 
the war, be it long or short." The man who said 
this had no lack of fight in him at the start, mind 
you, and I believe he represents a majority of the 
regiment. Fuller acquaintance with the temper 
and purposes of the rebels, discussion of the 
issues involved, and especially the news we get 
from home of the sayings and doings of the mis- 
erable "copperhead" journals and their followers 
at the North, have stirred to the bottom the foun- 
tains of honest indignation, and given strength to 
the purpose and patriotism of us all. The army 
is unanimous in this feeling, so far as I can judge. 
Having enlisted to fight traitors, the soldiers as a 



121 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

mass propose to fight them through, and would 
like to give those at home the same treatment 
they do those at the south. 

March 9. 

I was going to complain of the lack of inci- 
dent here, but since I began my letter, we have 
been supplied with some of that missing article. 
You will have heard by telegraph before this 
reaches you, of Mosby's dash into Fairfax Court 
House last night, and the capture in his bed of 
Brigadier General E. H. Stoughton, commanding 
this brigade. The camp is humming with the 
news, but in the uncertainty as to how much that 
is told of the attending circumstances is truth, I 
will not attempt to describe this vety creditable 
(to the rebels) occurrence. I beg leave to say, 
however, that none of the disgrace of the affair 
belongs to the regiments of the brigade. Gen- 
eral Stoughton was not taken from the midst of 
his command. The Vermont regiments nearest 
to the comfortable brick house which he occupied 
as his headquarters, were at Fairfax Station, four 
miles south of him, while the Twelfth and Thir- 
teenth were a dozen miles away. The risk of 
exactly such an operation has been apparent even 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 125 

to the privates, and has been a matter of frequent 
remark among officers and men, for weeks past. 
How could they protect him as long as he kept 
his quarters at such a distance from them ? * 

The moral of the transaction is too obvious to 
need suggestion. 

Colonel Blunt has been assigned to the com- 
mand of the brigade, and is removing his head- 
quarters to Fairfax Station. When he is pulled 
out of bed by guerillas I will let you know. 

Yours, B. 



*Rev. George B. Spaulding of Vergennes, in a cornmunicatiou to 
the N. Y. Times, commenting on the capture of General Stoughton, 
said that his capture had been predicted in a letter from Fairfax 
Court House, written ten days before the event. General Stough- 
ton's uncle, Hon. E. W. Stoughton of New York, afterwards U. S. 
Minister to Russia, took up the matter, avowed his disbelief in the 
existence of any such prediction, and offered to give $250 to the N. 
E. Soldiers' Relief Association for the name and residence of any 
person who had received a letter containing such a prediction. 
These were furnished to Mr. Stoughton, and he paid over the sum 
named to the Soldiers' Relief Association. 



126 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

XXIV. 

On Staff Duty.* 

Headquarters Second Vt. Brigade, 
Near Wolf Run Shoals, Va., 

March 21, 1863. 
Dear Free Press : 

I am glad to be able to announce an improve- 
ment in the health of the Twelfth regiment since 
I wrote you last. The existence of some sixty 
cases of pneumonia and typhoid fever, of which 
eight proved fatal in quick succession , alarmed us 
all at one time. But a change has taken place 
for the better, — due, apparently, to the increased 
care and precautions taken for the health of the 
men, for the weather has continued as trying as 
heretofore. We had snow and sharp cold weather 
yesterday and last night, and have a drizzling 
rain to-day. There have been no deaths within 
a week past; the number on the .sick-list has 
decreased considerably, and the new cases of 
fever are of a milder type. The suddenness with 
which death gave the final discharge, in several 
of the fatal cases, was startling. In one case, the 

♦Shortly before the date of this letter the writer was permanently 
detailed for duty as aide-de-camp on the staff of the brigade com- 
mander. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 



12? 



man was taken sick one day, went into hospital 
the next, and died the next. In another, the 
poor fellow had just sent a message to his friends 
saying that he was pretty sick, but hoped he 
should get along with it, when he fell into a 
dreamy, wandering state, complained of the 
weight of his knapsack, and did not see how he 
could carry it across the river. Suddenly his 
breath stopped; the soldier was over the river, 
without his knapsack and never again to be 
troubled by its weight. 

There is now, I believe, but one man in hos- 
pital who is considered dangerously ill; and a 
week of sunshine, such as we must have soon, 
will bring the regiment back to its usual average 
of health. 

Colonel Blunt, as brigade commander, has been 
making his presence felt at Fairfax Station in 
the right way. The Station is a point of supply 
for all the troops at Centreville, Union Mills, 
Fairfax Court House, Fairfax Station and Wolf 
Run Shoals. The quantity of quartermaster and 
commissary stores here, is of course very large 
— and the position is to be held at all hazards. It 
is now, I am happy to say, in a very much better 
condition for defence than ever before. Rifle pits 



128 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

have been dug and breast-works by the mile 
thrown up, by the men of the Fourteenth, Fif- 
teenth and Sixteenth regiments, along the high 
ground surrounding the Station on every side, 
from behind which they will be happy to meet 
any force likely to be sent against them. The 
picket lines have also been closely looked after; 
the various departments of supply for the brigade 
have received attention; and the brigade and reg- 
imental hospitals have had the benefit of the 
colonel's occasional unannounced presence and 
quick eye for defects in management. One learns 
to value energy and attention to his business in a 
commanding officer, after seeing how the influ- 
ence of such qualities is felt throughout down to 
the last private in the brigade. 

How long the rebels will leave our infantry 
regiments unmolested, of course I cannot say; 
but the way in which our cavalry suffer of late, 
is a caution to us all. You have heard of the 
recent capture of Major Wells, a captain, two 
lieutenants and twenty men of the Vermont cav- 
alry at Herndon Station, Va.. some twenty miles 
north of this place. This was followed up night 
before last by the gobbling up of a picket reserve 
of the Pennsylvania cavalry, numbering some 



AKMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 129 

twenty men, a short distance to the right of our 
own picket line on the Occoquan. These sur- 
prises of the cavalry, I must say, are getting to 
be altogether too frequent. 

I have, by the way, recently met one or two of 
the men who were present at the capture of our 
Vermont cavalry at Aldie, two or three weeks 
since. Captain Huntoon's party were thrown off 
from their guard by a body of the Eighteenth 
Pennsylvania cavalry which met them on its way 
in from the outside, and reported no rebels any- 
where in the region. The men were hemmed in 
by the rebels in the yard of a mill, from which 
they were getting grain to feed their horses. The 
force under Captain Mosby numbered, according 
to his own statement, twenty-seven men. Cap- 
tain Woodward's horse was killed instantly by a 
ball in the spine and fell upon Captain Wood- 
ward, pinning him to the ground. While lying 
thus, a rebel ruffian rode up and commenced firing 
at the prostrate captain, who would probably 
have been murdered in cold blood had he not 
managed to draw a small pistol from his breast 
pocket, with w T hich he was lucky enough to send a 
ball through his assailant's body. One man of 
his company defended himself for some time from 



130 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

two rebels who were trying to seize his horse, 
which he held by the halter, by striking at them 
with the bridle and bits. Gurtin, the Rutland 
boy who was so severely wounded, was seen to 
stop, with the balls flying around him and after 
two had gone through him, and deliberately load 
his revolver, which he had emptied, and dis- 
charge it at the rebels, after which he put spurs 
to his horse and made his escape. He now lies in 
the hospital at Fairfax Court House in a critical 
condition, a ball having passed through the bone 
of the pelvis into the groin, where it cannot be 
extracted. 

Several of the men who were captured with 
General Stoughton and accompanied him to Rich- 
mond, have been paroled and have returned. 
They say that they were taken to Culpeper that 
night and the next morning, and remained there 
over one day, a delay which might have ensured 
the recapture of the prisoners, had a sufficient 
cavalry force followed upon their tracks. General 
Stoughton was well treated at Culpeper by 
General Fitzhugh L,ee, who was a classmate of 
the general's at West Point; but after his arrival 
in Richmond he was taken to the Libby prison, 
where he now lies in company with 10S officers of 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 131 

our army, who are all confined in one room. A 
lady acquaintance of the general's in Richmond 
had furnished him with some blankets; but he 
was kept on the same scanty fare as that allowed 
to the other prisoners — a third of a loaf of bread 
and a small piece of poor meat per diem. The 
general and his friends are hoping for his speeds- 
release on parole.* 

Yours, B. 



XXV. 

Headquarters Second Vermont Brigade, 
Wolf Run Shoals, Va., 
April 9, 1863. 
Dear Free Press : 

If I sometimes talk about the weather it is 
because it is a subject of prime importance in 
every camp. Upon the weather depend both 
the movements of armies and the health of 
the troops, to an extent which can hardly 
be realized by any one not connected with the 
army. The risks the soldier thinks most about 

♦General Stoughton's appointment as brigadier general, then 
pending confirmation by the U. S. Senate, was withdrawn by Presi- 
dent Lincoln. This left him without rank in the army. He was 
paroled, retired to private life, and did not return to the service. 



132 AKMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

when he first enlists, are commonly those of 
the battlefield. After he has been out a while, 
not wounds or death or capture, but sickness, is 
his great dread. As long as he is well, if he is a 
true man, he cares little about the rest. For 
a month past we have encouraged ourselves with 
the thought that the season of snows and mud was 
about over. The inhabitants hereabouts told us 
that they frequently commenced ploughing in 
February, and that such gardens as they have 
were always made or making by the middle of 
March. This may be so; but we have no evidence 
of the fact this year. If you could have heard 
the storm howl here last Saturday night, or seen 
the pickets wading to their posts next day 
through snow which frequently in the hollows 
was over boot tops, you would have come to the 
conclusion that winter was not "rotting in the 
sky" in Virginia. To-day the snow still lies 
upon the shaded hill-slopes, and the air is as 
chilly, in spite of the sunshine, as in any April 
day in Vermont. We have now done counting 
on the speedy return of mild and pleasant weather. 
It may come, when it pleases the kind Ruler of 
the sunshine and the storm ; but our boys declare 
that they shall not be surprised to leave Virginia 



AKMV LIFE IN VIKGINIA. 133 

in a snow storm when our time is out next July. 
The sick list of the Twelfth is larger now than 
ever before, numbering not less than 120, besides 
a number who suffer from severe colds but are 
not sick enough to require the surgeon's care. 
This diminution from the effective force of the 
regiment, while the details for picket duty are 
increased rather than diminished, tells sensibly 
upon the labors of the well and strong. But 
while there is some complaining, of course, all 
are ready to own that they had far rather do the 
work of the sick and feeble ones, than to take 
their places in the hospitals. There have been 
one or two more deaths since I wrote you last. 
The Twelfth, heretofore the healthiest, seems to 
be now the sickliest regiment in the brigade. 
Why this is so, it is hard to explain. Partly, per- 
haps, because the other regiments had their "sick 
spells" and got through the process of acclima- 
tion sooner ; partly because the measles had a 
run in the winter and left many men in poor con- 
dition to resist the exposures of the spring; partly, 
perhaps mainly, owing to the unhealthy location 
of the camp. The last reason will not hold after 
this. This week the regiment has moved camp 
to a hard- wood knoll, a quarter of a mile from the 



134 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

old one. The location is higher and the ground 
much better than the old one. The men erected 
new stockades before they left the old ones, and 
when the mud dries will be very comfortable in 
their new quarters. I wish you could look into 
some of the new shanties, and see how comforta- 
ble. I have one of Company C's in my eye — 
stockade of logs, split in halves, laid flat side in 
and hewed smooth, a good five feet high and 
closely covered by the canvas roof; door of boards 
in one side; good floor of pieces of hard tack 
boxes ; bunks wide enough for two men, one 
over the other, made of smooth poles which make 
a spring bedstead; sheet iron stove ; sofa of split 
white wood, without ends or back; gun rack 
filled with its shining arms — the principal orna- 
ment of the room ; shelves, pegs to hang things 
on, and other conveniences too numerous to men- 
tion — why, it is good enough for the honeymoon 
palace of the Princess and Prince of Wales, good 
enough even for a soldier of the Army of the 
Union. 

This brigade is now picketing twenty odd miles 
of line. The Fourteenth guards the lower Occo- 
quan from the lowest ford at Colchester to Davis's 
Ford, three miles below the Shoals. The Twelfth 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 135- 

and Thirteenth picket from there to Yates's Ford, 
a couple of miles below Union Mills. The Fifteenth 
and Sixteenth take care of the rest of the line up 
to Blackburn's Ford, on Bull Run, where the 
pickets of General Hays' brigade meet our own. 

The men of the Twelfth have been gratified by 
the recent removal of the headquarters of the 
brigade to the vicinity of the Shoals, thus bring- 
ing Colonel Blunt in a measure back to them, 
and the colonel is as glad to be near his regiment 
as they are to have him here. 

Our pickets have been repeatedly fired on at 
night of late by bushwhackers. The consequence 
is stricter measures with the inhabitants within 
and near our lines. Brigade Provost Marshal, 
Captain William Munson, has been visiting all 
the houses in this region, searching for and con- 
fiscating all arms and property contraband of 
war, and registering the names and standing as 
to loyalty, of the citizens. It goes hard with 
some of these F. F. V's, to give up the old fowl- 
ing pieces, of which quite a collection is accumu- 
lating at headquarters, some of them nearly as 
long as Iyong Bridge, and old as the invention of 
gunpowder apparently, which have been handed 



136 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

down from father to son for generations; but they 
have to come. 

It is one of the most embarrassing portions of 
the duty of a commanding officer in such a 
region as this, to deal properly with the non- 
combatant inhabitants. The innocent must often 
suffer with the guilty, from the nature of the case. 
Colonel Blunt is kind to the sincerely loyal, of 
whom there are very few, and to the inoffensive, 
of whom there are more, within our lines, and is 
looked up to by them as a protector; but the men 
whose influence contributed to bring about the 
present state of things, whose sons are in the 
rebel army, and whose sympathies are with that 
side, get little consolation when the}' come to 
Colonel Blunt to complain. They are informed 
that as the}* would have secession and war, and 
have sown the wind, they must take the conse- 
quences and reap the whirlwind. Such dialogues 
as the following are not infrequent : Citizen, 
"Good morning, Colonel," Colonel, "Good morn- 
ing, sir." — Citizen, "My name is ; your 

troops are stealing my rails; I'd like to save what 
I've got left, and wish you'd order them that 
ain't burnt brought back, and stop them taking 
any more." Colonel, "H'm, did you vote for 



ARM! LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 137 

secession?" Citizen, "Well," (hesitating,) "Well 
I did, colonel, but it is too late to talk about that 
now." Colonel, "Too late to talk about rails, 
too, sir. Good day, sir." Exit citizen with a 
large flea in his ear and rage in his heart at "the 
d d Yankees. ' ' 

But to return to the provost marshal's opera- 
tions, I was going to say that enough of inform- 
ation and arms have been obtained to fully war- 
rant the search. Muskets have been found hid 
in the closets, and cartridges and percussion caps 
by thousands laid away in the women's bureau 
drawers, the possession of which they relin- 
quished with extreme reluctance. Some citizens 
have been .sent in to Washington for safe custody , 
and it is hoped that this playing peaceful citizen 
by day and bushwhacker by night is measure- 
ably stopped, for the present. Captain Munson 
has performed his delicate duties, so far as I can 
learn, with great good judgment and efficiency. 

We turn back now from our lines remorselessly 
all fugitives from Dixie, except contrabands and 
deserters from the rebel army. Three of them 
came in to-day, one of them a young man of 25, 
the other two good looking boys of 1 7 , all of the 
Fifth Virginia cavalry. They are clothed in the 



138 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

coarse cotton and wool butternut colored jackets 
and trousers which commonly form the uniform of 
a rebel soldier when he has one; and tell the 
often repeated story of scanty rations, hard treat- 
ment, and poor pay. The twelve dollars a month 
which they are paid barely cover the cost of their 
clothes, at the rates at which they are charged 
to them , so that the rebel soldier in fact works for 
his food and clothing, and not over much of 
either. One of these was a Baltimore boy who 
joined the rebel army in a hurry, on its invasion 
of Maryland seven months ago, and has repented 
at his leisure. They brought their carbines with 
them, and tell straight stories. They say that an 
impression that the war is to continue indefi- 
nitely prevails now in the South, and is disheart- 
ening many who have hitherto held out strongly 
for the rebel cause. 

This being fast day in Vermont, a general 
order from the colonel commanding directed the 
relief of the men from all unnecessary duties, and 
the observance of religious exercises appropriate 
to the occasion. The unsettled state of the camp 
of the Twelfth prevented our chaplain from 
preaching a sermon. I attended divine service in 
the camp of the Fourteenth and heard a patriotic 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 139 

and excellent sermon by Chaplain Smart of that 
regiment. Yours, B. 



XXVI. 

Headquarters Second Vt. Brigade, 
Union Midls, Va., 

April 26, 1863. 
Dear Free Press : 

It is more than two weeks now since orders 
came for the Second brigade to be in readiness to 
take the field ; but we still linger on the banks of 
the muddy Occoquan. The order to make ready 
was promptly complied with. The extra baggage 
of the officers (wives included in some cases) , 
was sent in to Alexandria or Washington; the 
tents were turned back to the quartermasters; the 
men overhauled their "cotton bureaus" and dis- 
carded superfluities with Spartan rigor; and the 
feeble men were sent into the city hospitals. Over 
a hundred men were thus sent in from this regi- 
ment, of whom many would probably be now on 
duty if they had stayed in camp, and many 
others in a very few days more, who will now 
have to go through the circumlocution office of 



140 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

the hospitals and convalescent camp; and some 
will hardly more than rejoin the regiment, if at 
all, before their term of service will be out. But 
the orders of the medical authorities were per- 
emptory. The brigade was to be "cleared for 
action," and it was done. We have been ready 
to sail in, any day since, but the order to move 
does not come. We trust that we are not to be 
kept here any longer, in the doubtless important, 
but inactive and inglorious duty of the defence 
of Washington. We have "stood guard" long 
enough. If there is anything to be done, and 
they will only allow us to have a hand in it before 
our time expires, it is all the favor we ask of our 
military rulers. 

The ranks of Company C have been sadly 
depleted \>y the prevailing maladies. The com- 
pany and the cause have lost two good soldiers, in 
the deaths of Corporal Pope and Private Sutton. 
I fear that more are to follow them. Some dry 
and warm weather, however, such as I trust we 
are about to have, will do wonders for the health 
of the command. 

Brigadier General Stannard arrived last week, 
and assumed command. .He is right welcome to 
the brigade, for the soldiers know his sterling 




GEORGE J. STANNARD, 

BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL U. S. V. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 141 

qualities, and to none more so than to the Twelfth 
to whom his coming restores their colonel. 

The paymaster is paying the brigade four 
months' pay. 

Yours, B. 



XXVII. 
Skirmish at Warrenton Junction. 

Headquarters Second Vt. Brigade, 
Union Miles, Va., May 4, 1863. 

Dear Free Press : 

On Friday morning last, the Twelfth broke 
camp and moved toward the front. The orders 
from division headquarters called for a regiment 
to go out to Warrenton Junction, for the protec- 
tion of the O. & A. railroad, which has lately 
been re-opened to the Rappahannock and is soon 
to be again an important channel of supplies for 
the army, and the Twelfth was selected for the 
duty. Officers and men were glad enough to 
leave Wolf Run Shoals, and to go where there 
was a prospect of more active service, and took 
up the line of march in high spirits. The regi- 



142 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

ment reached Union Mills at about n o'clock, 
and there took cars for Warren ton Junction. It 
now lies in camp about three miles beyond 
Warrenton Junction, two companies being sta- 
tioned at Catlett's Station. 

I paid them a visit yesterday. Taking a seat 
on the engine of a supply train, in company with 
Colonel Blunt and several other officers, we 
whirled away. We soon reached the historic 
ground of Manassas, its plains seamed with rifle- 
pits and its low hills crowned with earth-works. 
Thence to Catlett's our iron horse picked his way 
over rails which were torn up by the rebels last 
summer, and have since been straightened after a 
fashion and relaid, and along a track which is 
strewn on each side with car trucks by the hun 
dred and other burnt and blackened remains of 
the trains destroyed by General Banks, and by 
the rebels in the famous raid on General Pope's 
headquarters before the last Bull Run battles. 
The country from Bristow's on to Warrenton 
Junction and beyond, is a fine, open and compar- 
atively level region, in strong contrast with the 
barren hills along the Occoquan, the scattered 
planters' houses showing evidences of more pros- 
perity and the fields under cultivation to a 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 143 

greater extent than in any portion of Virginia 
where we have heretofore been stationed. 

.Near Bristow's we were stopped by a fright- 
ened telegraph operator, on horseback, who said 
he had just escaped from Warrenton Junction, 
which place he reported in the hands of the rebel 
cavalry, who according to his account had come 
in and captured the whole force of Union cavalry 
there. We heard his story and pushed on to 
Catlett's, where we learned a different one, and 
hastening to Warrenton Junction we soon had the 
evidence of our own eyes upon the case. A body 
of cavalry, in the blue uniforms of Uncle Sam's 
boys, held the Junction, and the bodies of a dozen 
dead horses strewn around the solitary house 
at the station told of a sharp skirmish on that 
spot. Springing from the train, I had hardly 
taken twenty steps before I came upon the body 
of a dead rebel, stretched stark and cold, face 
upward, in coat of rusty brown and pantaloons of 
butternut. They showed me papers taken from 
his pockets, showing him to be one Templeman, a 
well known scout and spy of Mosby's command. 
Passing on to the house I found lying around it 
seventeen wounded "butternuts" of all ages, 
from boys of sixteen to shaggy and grizzled men 



144 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

of fifty years. They lay in their blood, with 
wounds as yet undressed, for the skirmish ended 
but a little while before we arrived, some with 
gaping sabre cuts, some with terrible bullet 
wounds through face, body or limbs. Four or 
five rebel prisoners, unhurt, stood by, with down- 
cast faces, but willing to answer civil questions. 
Close by, covered decently with a blanket, lay 
the body of a Union cavalryman, shot in cold 
blood after he had surrendered and given up his 
arms, by a long haired young rebel, who had 
received his reward for the dastardly act and lay 
near his victim, with a bullet wound in his stom- 
ach. The floor of the house was strewn with 
wounded men, among them Major Steele of the 
First Virginia, mortally wounded, and two of 
Mosby's officers. Their wounds had just been 
dressed, and the surgeons now began to give at- 
tention to the wounded rebels outside. 

From men engaged on both sides, I learned 
that Mosby, who has recently been made a major 
for his activity in the rebel service, with 125 
men,* made a dash upon the outpost of the First 
Virginia (union) cavalry, at the Junction, about 
9 o'clock that morning. The men of the First 

*Mosby in his Reminiscences says he had "70 or So men." 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 145' 

Virginia were taken by surprise, dismounted and 
with their horses unsaddled, and after a short 
fight surrendered. A few who had taken refuge 
in the station house kept up the fight by firing 
from the upper windows, till Mosby filled the 
house with smoke by setting fire to a pile of hay 
on the lower floor, when they hung out a white 
flag. They accounted for their surprise by aver- 
ring that the front rank of the rebels were clothed 
in U. S. uniform, and they supposed them to be a 
friendly force. 

Major Mosby was, however, a little too fast for 
once. A squadron of the Fifth New York cav- 
alry, under Major Hammond, happened to be in 
camp in a piece of woods near by, and making 
their appearance on the scene while the rebels 
were securing their prisoners, charged in on 
them at once. A running fight followed in 
which the prisoners were all retaken and twenty- 
three of their captors killed, wounded and made 
prisoners. Mosby was chased for ten miles, his 
force for the most part scattered, himself, as it is 
reported, wounded in the shoulder, and a number 
of his men wounded who made out to get into the 
woods and escape capture. The First Virginia 
lost their major, mortally wounded, one man 



116 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

killed and nine men wounded, and the Fifth New 
York a captain and two lieutenants wounded. 
The result of the operation was, you see, alto- 
gether in our favor. Three men of the Twelfth 
Vermont were taken near the camp, by Mosby's 
men, buc escaped in the skirmish, one of them 
bringing in a rebel's horse with him. The pickets 
of the Twelfth took a straggler from Mosby's 
force. A party of the First Vermont cavalry, 
which is in camp just beyond the Twelfth, joined 
the pursuit of the rebels but was not in at the 
skirmish. 

Going on to the camp of the Twelfth Vermont 
I found the men considerably stirred up by the 
events of the morning which took place so nearly 
under their noses, and feeling as if they were 
pretty well out into the enemy's country ; but if 
attacked I know that the Twelfth will give a good 
account of itself. 

The health of the regiment is improving. 
Company C has lost another man in the death of 
Private Stoughton. He was apparently one of 
our hardiest men, enduring exposures which 
many men would sink under, and besides doing 
his own full share of duty often did that of other 
men, being always ready to take the place of an 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 147 

ailing comrade. He ran right down with pneu- 
monia, gave up all hope from the start, and gave 
his life to his country without a murmur. 

We are waiting with intense anxiety for news 
from General Hooker's army. 

The season here is little or no earlier than in 
Vermont. The fields are just beginning to look 
green and the leaves of the forest trees are not yet 
started. 

The brigade has orders to be ready to march at 
an hour's notice. We look for lively work here 
if disaster overtakes Hooker. 

May 6. 

The regiment is ordered forward to Rappahan- 
nock Station, to guard the railroad bridge at that 
point. Yours, B. 

XXVIII. 

Spring-time in Virginia — Guarding the 

O. and A. Railroad. 

Headquarters Second Vt. Brigade, 
Union Mills, Virginia, 
May 19, 1863. 
Dear Free Press : 

Two weeks of sunshine and warm rains have 
brought forward the season in this region with 



14S ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

wonderful rapidity. The fields are now green; 
the forest leaves have fairly jumped out of the 
branches that remained brown and bare till we 
began to doubt the existence of the slumbering 
life within; the patches of hard wood fleck with 
paler green the dark pine forests on the hill- 
slopes; the oak groves are delightful for shade 
and shelter; the white blossoms of the dogwood 
adorn the undergrowth; the song-birds are numer- 
ous in kind and quantity ; and meadow and wood- 
land are passing pleasant to ever}- sense save 
that of taste, and that may be included if one 
chooses to pull up a root of sassafras, which is 
abundant in the woods. The charms of spring, 
heretofore alluded to, if I am not mistaken, by 
several writers both in prose and poetry, are 
appreciated by none more than by the soldiers. 
The spring-time gives carpet and canopy and 
hangings of green to their "truly rural" dwell- 
ings, and their life in the open air has many an 
agreeable feature. 

The men of the Twelfth have been enjoying to 
the full their sojourn in the splendid region at 
the front, and the regiment has been greatly ben- 
efited as to health hy the change. The number 
of new cases of sickness has been reduced to a 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 149 

nominal figure, and the convalescents who have 
returned from the hospitals in Alexandria have 
rapidly regained full strength. 

In the Thirteenth regiment the same malarial 
fever which weakened the Twelfth so at the 
Shoals is prevailing extensively and has proved 
fatal in four or five cases within a day or two. 

The Twelfth regiment, when first sent to the 
Rappahannock on the 7thinst.,was encamped 
near the river, but was afterwards drawn back 
for a mile — continuing, however, its guard at the 
bridge and pickets on the river — to a splendid 
stretch of meadow land in the edge of an oak 
grove. No finer location could have been asked 
for, and the boys would have been well content 
to remain there though the situation was an 
exposed one. It was as far to the front, you see, 
as General Hooker's army, and the two regi- 
ments — the Fifteenth lying about three miles this 
side of it, — were some twenty miles from sup- 
ports. Rebel scouting parties were seen daily, 
and there was a line of rebel pickets on the other 
side of the river opposite the camp. If the 
enemy had made a serious attempt to repossess 
the Orange and Alexandria railroad by a flank 
movement from the mountain passes through 



150 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

which Jackson came down on Pope, the Twelfth 
and Fifteenth would have had to fight it out 
alone. But that danger has passed. Two or 
three days since, a strong force of cavalry from 
Stoneman's corps came up to guard the lower end 
of the railroad, and 3'esterday the infantry regi- 
ments were withdrawn. 

The Fifteenth came back to Union Mills, and 
resumes its old duty of picketing along the Occo- 
quan and Bull Run. The Twelfth remains out a 
few miles, the right wing, which includes Com- 
pany C, being stationed at Bristow's, and the left 
wing, in two detachments, at Catlett's Station 
and Manassas Junction. 

I should like to describe more fully than I 
have done the region between us and the Rap- 
pahannock, its melancholy desolation, deserted 
mansions, farms without a laborer or sign of cul- 
tivation, and solitary chimney stacks, the only 
vestiges of hundreds of farm houses swept 
away by the scourge of war, while the few 
remaining inhabitants have reached a point where 
the owners of plantations of two or three thou- 
sand acres are glad to beg from our troops the 
common necessaries of life ; but I have not time 
to-day. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 151 

General Stannard retains his headquarters at. 
Union Mills, and devotes himself earnestly and 
effectively to the care of the troops. It is no 
light care. The Second Vermont brigade is spread 
over a line of fifty miles, three of the regiments 
maintaining a picket line for which the entire 
brigade used to be hardly sufficient, and two 
guarding thirty miles of railroad, for the protec- 
tion of which, a year ago, a force of sixteen 
thousand men was not considered too large, 
although then there was no rebel army this side 
of Richmond. If any one supposes that under 
such circumstances there is no work for the men, 
or labor and care for their officers, he has only to 
come out here to learn his mistake. But as yet 
we see no fighting. We heard the roar of the 
recent battles at Fredericksburg and Chancellors- 
ville, in which our brothers were winning good 
report though not victory, and wished we were 
by their sides. There is time yet to try our men 
under fire. If Hooker is further reinforced from this 
corps, we shall probably be sent to him ; and it is 
not impossible that we may have all the fighting 
we want right here ; but it must come within six 
weeks or not at all for us, in this term of service. 
Yours, B. 



152 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

XXIX. 

A Visit to the Battle-field of Bull Run. 

Headquarters Second Vt. Brigade, 
Union Mills, Va., June 15, 1863. 

Dear Free Press ; 

The theatre of active conflict has been approach- 
ing us sensibly of late. The battle of last Tues- 
day* took place near Rappahannock Bridge and 
Beverly's Ford, where the Twelfth Vermont was 
stationed but a few days ago. Since then the out- 
posts of Hooker's army and of this brigade, have 
been in daily contact. This morning we see the 
dust and hear the distant drums of two army 
corps, moving back to this line. The impression 
is general that the next big fight may take place 
in this vicinity, perhaps rendering thrice memor- 
able the historic ground of the two great Bull Run 
battles. 

I visited that battle ground on Saturday last. 
The troops of our brigade have long guarded 
Blackburn's Ford and have picketed upon the 
outskirts of the ground ; but the actual battle 
field has been outside of our lines, and traversed 
so frequently by rebel scouting parties, that 

* The cavalry engagement of Brandy Station. 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 153 

it has not been safe to visit it except with a 
party of strength enough to take care of any 
squad of "bushwhackers" or Mosby's rangers. 

For our excursion we had Col. Blunt, Lieut. 
Col. Farnham, Major Kingsley, Captains Orms- 
bee and Paul, Adjutant Vaughan, Lieut. Cloyes, 
Drum- Major Downer, and Hospital Steward 
Hard, of the Twelfth ; Col. Randall and Surgeon 
Nichols of the Thirteenth ; Adjutant Peabody, 
Quartermaster Henry, and several other officers 
of the Sixteenth ; Medical Director Ketch- 
uni ; Quartermaster Brownson, Lieut. Pren- 
tiss, Lieut. Thompson and your humble 
servant of Gen. Stannard's staff ; and orderlies 
and attendants enough to make a cavalcade of 
twenty-five. It was a party whose capture would 
have made something of a hole in the Second Ver- 
mont brigade, but we saw no armed enemy. 

Starting from Union Mills we crossed Bull Run 
at McLean's Ford, and struck off towards the battle 
field, some five or six miles thence in a direct 
line ; but following the windings of the intermin- 
able bridle paths which intersect every piece of 
forest and traverse every valley and field with a 
network, we made a longer distance of it. For a 
while we kept near the bank of the Run, edged 



154 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

with trench and breastwork for mile after mile on 
the southern side. These were Beauregard's 
works, and well constructed, as the rebel works 
generally are in this region. Leaving these we 
came out in time to a more open country, and Col. 
Randall and Adjutant Peabody, who were mem- 
bers of the old Vermont Second, at once recog- 
nized the neighborhood of their first battle. Soon 
we were on the spot where Rickett's battery was 
taken. The ruins of the Henry house, around 
which the battle raged and in which a woman 
was killed, were near us. The rose bushes still 
grow in the rank grass which covers what was 
once the door-yard or flower-garden, and blossom 
.as freely as if the storm of battle had never swept 
over them. A grave, protected by some rails 
thrown around it, near the ruined chimney stack, 
we conjectured to be possibly the resting place of 
the hapless occupant, whose fate gave her a place 
in the history of the first great battle of the great 
War for the Union. The grave of Lieut . Ramsay, 
and the spot where Col. Bartow, of Georgia, fell 
— once marked by a small marble monument, 
which for some reason was removed to Manassas 
Junction by the rebels last summer — are also 
right there. Plucking some roses to be pressed 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 155 

and sent home as mementoes of the battle ground, 
we passed on over the field. Guided by Col. 
Randall we saw where the fighting opened on the 
right and centre ; where the Second Vermont, 
then a regiment a month old, first went into 
action ; where it did its fighting ; where, upon the 
attack of fresh forces upon our right, it was 
ordered to fall back ; and where its dead were 
collected and buried. Many of the dead who fell 
in both the battles of Bull Run, were not buried 
in graves but simply covered with earth as they 
lay, and skulls and bones frequently protrude 
from the little mounds; but the Vermonters 
seemed to have been decently interred in a row. 
There are no head-boards to mark the graves, and % 
the grass grows thick over them. We passed by 
Dogan's house, still standing though unoccupied; 
we saw, of course, "the stone house," window- 
less and deserted and marked by cannon shot ; 
and we took our homeward way by the turnpike, 
fording Bull Run at the famous stone bridge, now 
a bridge no longer. 

On the battle-ground I saw not a trace of rifle- 
pit or earth- work of any description, and the 
fighting must have been in the main open stand- 
up work. The ground is almost covered in one 



156 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

or two spots with skeletons of horses. Its surface 
is ridged with graves, and strewn with cartridge 
boxes, remnants of uniforms and knapsacks, and 
here and there a rusty bayonet or unexploded 
shell. Many of the marks of the conflict are 
doubtless hidden by the grass, which grows prob- 
abty thicker than before on soil enriched by the 
blood and bones of fallen patriots and rebels. It 
is now entirely uncultivated and deserted ; but 
several of the farms around and near it are in a 
pretty good state of cultivation for Virginia, and 
in time, no doubt, the plough-share will be driven 
over its slopes, through grave and cannon rut, 
and all traces of the great battles will become 
obliterated. 

We returned to camp, after a ride taken all 
together of from 20 to 25 miles, without casual- 
ties. 

The weather is dry to actual drought. It is 
over a month since we have had more than a 
passing shower. The days are generally clear 
and hot and the nights uniformly cool. It is 
good weather for the health of our troops. 

The regiments have been taking turns, of late, 
at out-post duty at Bristow's and Catlett's. The 
Twelfth was drawn back to Union Mills a fort- 



ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 157 

night since, and remains here. The Sixteenth 
succeeded it out on the railroad, and was suc- 
ceeded in turn by the Fifteenth. 

You understand, of course, that if I have here- 
tofore mainly written of the Twelfth, it is because 
many of your readers are especially interested in 
it, and because it is my own regiment, and not 
because the others are not as well worthy of 
notice. All are good regiments. The Thirteenth, 
Col. Randall, I have not seen in line lately, but I 
hear that it is in a fine state of efficiency and drill. 
The Fourteenth, Col. Nichols, I saw on review 
recently, and admired the precision with which 
they marched and the general good appearance 
of the men. The Fifteenth and Sixteenth, Col- 
onels Proctor and Veazey, were reviewed here a 
while since, by Gen. Abercrombie, commanding 
the division, who expressed surprise and gratifi- 
cation at their fine discipline and appearance. 
The following order is official testimony to this : 

Headquarters Second Brigade, 

Abercrombie's Division, 

Union Miles, Va., May 26th, 1863. 

Special Order No. 19. 

The General Commanding desires to express to 
the regiments inspected to-day his congratula- 



158 ARMY LIFE IN VIRGINIA. 

tions on their soldierlike appearance, and to con- 
vey to them the approbation of the Division 
General. 

Gen. Abercrombie speaks in high terms of the 
Review and Inspection, especially of the manner 
in which both regiments passed through the 
manual of arms, and noticed with pleasure the 
attention that has been paid to drill and disci- 
pline by both officers and men. 

By order of Brig. Gen. G. J. Stannard, 
Wm. H. Hill, A. A. G. 
It will not be a satisfactory sight, in some 
aspects of it, to see these fine regiments, each 
over 800 strong to-day, going home at this criti- 
cal period of the war. But half of the men, and 
perhaps more, will re-enlist before the summer is 
over. Yours, B. 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 159 



XXX. 

The Battle of Gettysburg — Personal 
Observations and Experiences. 

Headquarters Second Vt. Brigade, 
Battlefield of Gettysburg, 

July 4, 1863. 
Dear Free Press : 

The scene has shifted since I wrote you last 
from the shores of the Occoquan to the fields of 
Pennsylvania, from pleasant camp life to scenes 
of battle and frightful bloodshed. My last letter 
was hardly closed when we got the exciting news 
that Lee's army was in full march to the north, 
through the Shenandoah Valley, and that the 
Army of the Potomac was on its way north to 
protect the National Capital — news soon con- 
firmed by the appearance of troops of contrabands 
and long columns of the cavalry and infantry of 
three army corps, with forty batteries of the 
reserve artillery, which came streaming past for 
four days and as many nights. 

On the 23d of June General Stannard received 
notice that his brigade had been attached to the 
Third division of the First Army Corps; that it 



160 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

was to hold the line of the Oecoquan till the 
main army had passed, and then was to follow 
the corps and join it if possible before the 
great battle which was expected. On the 25th 
ult. the brigade started. I was sent to Washing- 
ton that day by General Stannard, on special 
duty, and did not overtake the brigade till it had 
passed into Maryland. The march to Gettys- 
burg lasted a week — seven weary days of contin- 
uous marching through the mud. Our men, you 
know, were not inured to marching. Some were 
poorly shod, for in view of the speedy termina- 
tion of their service they had not been allowed to 
exchange old shoes for new ; but they marched 
well. With sore and blistered and often bleed- 
ing feet, in some cases barefooted, they pushed 
along and made their twenty miles, or nearly 
that, a day, and gained nearly a day's march on 
the First corps, before it joined it on the battle- 
field. 

I spent the night of the 28th in Frederick 
City, which was full of soldiers, and considered 
myself fortunate to get a cot to sleep on in a 
private house, where next morning I met Charles 
Carleton Coffin and Mr. Crounse, the army cor- 
respondents of the Bosto?i Journal and N. Y. 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 161 

Times, who directed me to the headquarters of 
the army , j ust outside the city . Thither I hurried 
in a drizzling rain to find Colonel Edward R. 
Piatt, of General Hooker's staff, who, being a 
Vermonter I thought would know where I could 
find the Second Vermont brigade. As I reached 
headquarters, I met General Hooker with sev- 
eral officers of his staff, riding away. As he 
returned my salute, I noticed the expression upon 
his striking features, and said to myself: "Some- 
thing is going wrong with Hooker; he is not 
happy." Later I learned that he had been 
relieved; had just turned over the command to 
General Meade, and was then taking his final 
departure from army headquarters. Getting 
directions on what road to follow the First corps; 
and being lucky enough to hire a horse of a 
farmer, who accompanied me on horseback to 
make sure of the return of his beast, I pushed to 
the north, overhauled the brigade about noon, 
and was glad to join General Stannard at the 
head of the column, and to exchange the Mary- 
lander's gray mare for my own horse. 

The next afternoon I was sent forward by 
General Stannard with a report to General John 
B. Reynolds, commanding the First corps. To 



162 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

reach his headquarters involved a ride of ten 
miles in the strong current of the Army of the 
Potomac, moving to the north. The march of 
an army of a hundred thousand men is an 
imposing spectacle, though the uniforms be dusty 
and the marchers footsore. All the roads and 
avenues throughout a wide stretch of country 
were thronged with artillery and army wagons; 
the newly-made but already bare and hard-trod- 
den pathways along the roadsides were filled with 
troops ; the very landscape seemed to move with 
the movement of armed men. 

It was after sundown when I reached the head 
of the column of the corps, then halted for the 
night. I found General Reynolds at a little coun- 
try tavern, about five miles from Gettysburg. He 
was resting from the fatigue of the da)-, his tall 
form stretched at full length upon a wooden set- 
tle. He received my report without rising, and 
scarcely raising his head from his arms, folded 
under it, made some inquiries in regard to the 
strength of the Vermont brigade, sent back a 
message to General Stannard, and remarked that 
he was glad to have the brigade join the corps, 
for he thought all the men they could get might 
be needed before many hours. This was my first 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. . 163 

and last sight of this brave and able general. 
Next morning he was be3 r ond the need of men 
or mortal help, with a confederate bullet in his 
brain. 

When I returned to the brigade, bivouacking 
near Emmittsburg, the word was running through 
the ranks that 30,000 rebs were in Cashtown, Pa. r 
twelve miles away. L,ee, then, had turned back 
from Harrisburg. The armies were converging. 
How long before they would meet in mortal 
struggle ? 

The first news that the great battle we were 
expecting had begun reached us about noon of 
Wednesday, July 1, when a courier, spurring a 
tired horse, met General Stanuard riding at the 
head of his brigade, eight or nine miles south of 
Gettysburg, with word from General Doubleday 
that a big fight was in progress at Gettysburg; 
that General Reynolds had been killed and he 
had succeeded to the command of the First 
corps; that the corps and cavalry were fighting 
a large part of the rebel army and having hard 
work to hold their ground, and that Stannard 
must hasten forward as fast as possible. 

He did .so, but the heat was oppressive, the 
men were tired, and they moved all too wearity till 



164 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

crossing a crest four or five miles from the field , 
the heavy roar of cannon in front reached all 
ears. The sound put life into the men, and 
there was no lagging after that. As we neared 
Gettysburg we began to see groups of excited 
inhabitants, most of them women, gathered 
wherever there was an outlook toward the field. 
Their anxious faces were bent upon us with 
varied expressions, some seeming by their sad 
gaze to say, "Alas, that these too should be food 
for powder," while the eyes of others, as they 
glanced down the long column of the brigade 
which had more men in it than some divisions, 
lighted with hope, and the}' waved us on as to 
certain victory. 

The smoke of the battle was now mounting 
high over the field, and the " sultry thunder " of 
artillery, rolling continuously and heavily, filled 
the air. About sundown, as the brigade reached 
the outskirts of the field, I was again sent forward 
to report its arrival to the division commander 
and was thus the first man of the brigade to reach 
the actual battle ground. 

The artillery firing had ceased, but carbines 
were cracking on the plain as I rode across it. 
Passing inside of a skirmish line of dismounted 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 165 

cavalry I took my way to a low hill , which seemed 
to be the centre of operations. Batteries were 
in position on the brow of the hill and troops 
forming along its top. They were what was left 
of the Eleventh corps, after its retreat through the 
village, rallying on a new line to meet an antic- 
ipated attack from the enemy, then apparently 
forming for an assault, at the foot of the hill. 
I rode up to a colonel who was directing the 
disposition of a line of battle. A white handker- 
chief was wound around his neck, through the 
folds of which blood was oozing from a wound in 
his throat. He directed me where he thought I 
could find a portion of the First corps, and I found 
Gen. Rowley, commanding the Third division of 
the corps, stretched on the ground by a little white 
house. He was asleep, overcome by fatigue, or 
something, and his aids would not wake him. 
They told me to guide the brigade to that point ; 
and after a while, the tired men stretched them- 
selves upon their arms in a wheat field, and sank 
into the deep and reckless sleep of the weary 
soldier. There was rest for the men ; but not for 
our general. Gen. Stannard was appointed gen- 
eral field officer of the day, or of the night 
rather, in that part of the field, and had to see to 



166 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

the posting of the pickets of another corps besides 
our own. The duty called for a night in the sad- 
dle, upon the army lines. 

The second day of the battle opened on 
Thursday without firing, save now and then a 
shot from the pickets, but we saw considerable 
moving of troops on our side behind the low 
ridge which concealed us from the enemy, and 
doubtless the same process was going on, on their 
side, unseen by us. The batteries alone on the 
crests of the ridges menaced each other, like 
grim bulldogs, in silence. 

The three regiments present of our brigade — 
the Twelfth having been held back and the Fif- 
teenth sent back to guard the ammunition trains 
in the rear — were placed behind Cemetery Hill, a 
round hill crowned by a cemetery laid out with 
an amount of taste unusual in a place of the size 
of Gettysburg ; and General Stannard was noti- 
fied that he was in command of the infantry sup- 
ports of the batteries upon the left of the hill, 
and would be held responsible for their safety. 

Our batteries were planted, not actually upon 
the graves, but close to them within the cemetery 
— such are the necessities of war. Our regiments 
lay behind the hill through the forenoon, the 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 167 

men lounging on the grass, till about 3 o'clock, 
when the ball opened by the whizzing of shell 
around our ears. The first thrown exploded over 
the Thirteenth regiment, and two or three men of 
it were wounded by the fragments. A sudden 
scampering to the rear of orderlies, ambulances, 
and all whose duties did. not hold them to the 
spot, followed. The troops were moved a little 
closer under the hill and made to lie down ; our 
own batteries opened sharply, and an artillery 
duel followed. The shells came screaming through 
the air with not altogether agreeable frequency, 
mingled, for those of us whose duties called us to 
the top of the hill, with the frequent humming 
of minie balls. Occasionally a battery horse 
would plunge and rear for a moment and then 
drop. As I passed one of the guns, I noticed a 
fine looking sergeant of the battery, watching 
eagerly the effect of the shot he had just aimed ; 
as I came back again, two minutes later, he was 
lying dead by his gun. Men came by us from 
the skirmish line in front, with gun-shot wounds 
of arm or leg or head. A company was called 
for as support to the skirmishers. Captain Foster, 
of General Stannard's staff, was sent out to sta- 
tion them, and was brought back in a few 



168 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

minutes shot through both legs. We were told 
by the old warriors that this thundering of can- 
non must be the prelude to a charge upon our 
lines, and all watched to see where it would 
come. About six, the nearing of musketry firing 
to our left indicated the spot, and in a few minutes 
we heard, above the din, the yell with which the 
rebels charge. There was scarce time to think 
what it meant, when orders came for our brigade 
to hurry to the left, where the lines were now 
being borne back by the enemy. Several regi- 
ments had broken for the rear; a battery had 
been taken, and our brigade was called for to fill 
the gap. Five companies of the Thirteenth, 
under Colonel Randall, led the advance on the 
double quick. The left wing of the regiment, 
under Lieut. Col. Munson, had been supporting a 
battery to the right and brought up the rear of the 
column. General Hancock was rallying the troops 
on the spot. "Can you retake that batten-, 
Colonel?" was his question, as they came up. 
"Forward, boys," was the reply, and in they 
went. Captain L,onergan's company of "bould 
soldier boys" took the lead and rushed at the bat- 
tery with their Irish yell. Colonel Randall's gray 
horse fell under him, shot through the shoulder, 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 169 

and he went on, on foot. The guns were reached, 
wheeled round and passed to the rear, and press- 
ing on, the boys of the Thirteenth took two rebel 
guns with some eighty odd of the "graybacks" 
who were supporting them. This ended the 
fighting for the night. The Thirteenth fell back to 
the main line, which, thus restored by the Ver- 
monters, was held by our brigade to the close of 
the battle, at the point on the left centre at and 
around which the hardest fighting of the next 
day took place. 

With the darkness the firing ceased, and we 
then heard from our front that sound which once 
heard will not be forgotten by any one — a low, 
steady, indescribable moan — the groans of the 
wounded, lying by thousands on the battle-field. 
As the moon was rising I rode out upon the field 
in front of our lines. My horse started aside at 
every rod from the bodies of dead men or horses; 
and wounded men, Union soldiers and rebels in 
about equal proportions, were making their way 
slowly within our lines. Some of the latter said 
that General Barksdale, of Mississippi, lay mor- 
tally wounded out beyond, and begged to be 
brought in. A party from the Fourteenth was 
sent to search for him, but he was not found till 



170 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

near morning. I saw his body soon after the life 
had left it, next morning, and, having seen him 
on the floor of Congress, recognized it at once. 
He was dressed in a suit of the light-bluish-gray 
mixture of cotton and wool, worn commonly by 
the rebel officers, with gold lace upon the coat 
sleeves and down the seams of the trousers. His 
vest thrown open disclosed a ball hole through 
the breast, and his legs were bandaged and 
bloody from gunshots through both of them. He 
had fought without the wig which Speaker Grow 
once knocked off in the Hall of Representatives, 
and his bald head and broad face, with open 
unblinking eyes, lay uncovered in the sunshine. 
There he lay alone, without a comrade to brush 
the flies from his corpse. 

Our men slept Thursday night upon their arms. 

Returning to headquarters, simply a spot on 
the open field where the brigade headquarters flag 
was planted amid the lines of sleeping soldiers, I 
stretched myself, supperless — for our headquar- 
ters cooks and mess wagon disappeared when the 
artillery firing began that day, and were lost to 
sight, though to memory dear, throughout the 
rest of the battle — on the ground, but had got 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 171 

only an hour's sleep when I was aroused by an 
orderly. 

General Stannard, anticipating harder fighting 
on the morrow, wanted more cartridges for his 
men, and sent me to find the division ammunition 
train, supposed to be at or near Rock Creek 
Church, three or four miles away, and procure a 
supply. Followed by a mounted orderly I went 
to the place, to find that the trains had been 
ordered back no one knew where; but that some 
First corps wagons, probably containing ammuni- 
tion, had moved up near the field. I spent the 
rest of the night in search of these wagons, zig- 
zagging around the field wherever I saw a camp 
fire or light. I stopped at a dozen or more of 
the great Pennsylvania barns, looking more like 
large factory buildings than like our New Eng- 
land barns. Each of them was a field hospital; 
its floor covered with mutilated soldiers, and 
surgeons busy at the lantern-lighted operating 
tables. 

By the door of one of them was a ghastly pile 
of amputated arms and legs, and around each of 
them lay multitudes of wounded men, covering 
the ground by the acre, wrapped in their blank- 
ets and awaiting their turns under the knife. I 



172 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

was stopped hundreds of times by wounded men, 
sometimes accompanied by a comrade but often 
wandering alone, to be asked in faint tones the 
way to the hospital of their division, till the accu- 
mulated sense of the bloodshed and suffering of 
the day became absolutely appalling. It seemed 
to me as if ever)- square yard of the ground, for 
many square miles, must have its blood stain. 
After three or four hours of such fruitless wan- 
dering I gave up the search and started back for 
the brigade. The moon, now setting, had 
become obscured, and, lacking its guiding light 
and following a road which I supposed to be that 
over which I went to Rock Creek Church, but 
which was really, as I afterwards learned, the 
Baltimore pike, I found myself toward morning 
passing under a tall arch, beyond which stood 
two field pieces in the roadway. 

Everything was still around, but as I rode 
between the guns, a form rose from beside them, 
and a voice asked where I was going. I explained 
and was told that I would find nothing in that 
direction till I struck the rebel lines. The arch 
was the entrance gate to the cemetery ; and the 
rebel lines were near by at the base of the hill. 
Iliad completely lost my way, and but for the 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 173 

warning of the artillery man I should now prob- 
ably be on my way to L,ibby prison. 

I reached brigade headquarters as day was 
breaking, and as the cannonade of Friday morn- 
ing began. A shell struck near my feet without 
exploding, as I dismounted. A minute later 
another broke the leg of an orderly's horse ten 
feet awajf. Still another took off the hoof of 
another horse, close by. It was plain that the 
horses were drawing the enemy's fire, and they 
were removed beyond the ridge behind us. From 
that time on until the close of the battle, with 
one or two exceptions, we saw no horses or 
mounted men anywhere near where we were, 
except those of the batteries on that front. 

The artillery fire was quite sharp for a while in 
the morning from the rebel batteries opposite us, 
but died away in an hour or so. It was perhaps 
intended to divert attention while the enemy was 
preparing a desperate attack upon our extreme 
right. Gen. Stannard adjusted a little the posi- 
tions of his regiments. The Sixteenth was on the 
skirmish line in front. The Fourteenth was 
moved forward several rods to a line where some 
scattered trees and bushes afforded a partial cover. 
The Thirteenth was placed to the right and a little 



174 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

to the rear of the Fourteenth. No troops were in 
front of us. The. ground had been fought over 
the day before, and a number of the dead of both 
armies lay scattered upon it. Fearing that the 
sight of these bloody corpses might dishearten 
some of our men, I suggested to the general that 
it would be well to cover them with some of the 
blankets which lay about, and aided by an orderly 
I covered a number of the bodies where our men 
lay, the living and dead side by side. About six 
o'clock the musketry firing became tremendous 
about a mile to our right. We could see nothing 
of it but the white smoke rising above the tree 
tops ; but the volleys rolled in one continuous 
crash for six hoars. The sound did not recede or 
advance, and we inferred that each side held its 
ground. 

While this was going on, Gen. Lee, as it turned 
out, was collecting his batteries behind the crest 
of the ridge over against us. The ground here 
is a broad open stretch of meadow land, slop- 
ing away from the ridge on which our bat- 
teries were placed, in front of which, further 
down the slope, our infantry lay in three 
lines of battle perhaps 50 yards apart, and 
then rising to a rounded ridge over against us, 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. . 175 

from half to three-fourths of a mile away, which 
was held by the enemy. Our men improved the 
lull to make a little protection by collecting the 
rails which had been fences a day or two before, 
and piling them in a low breastwork perhaps two 
feet high. This would of course be a very slight 
protection for men standing ; but for men lying 
prostrate they proved a valuable cover, and we 
found we needed every such assistance before 
night. 

About one o'clock a couple of guns from the 
enemy gave the signal ; from seventy-five to a 
hundred guns* were run out upon the ridge right 
over against us, and for an hour and a half, what old 
veterans pronounce the severest cannonade of the 
war was opened directly upon us. The air seemed 
to be literally filled with flying missiles. Shells 
whizzed and popped on every side. Spherical 
case exploded over our heads and rained iron 
bullets upon us ; the Whitworth solid shot, easily 
distinguished by their clear musical ring, flew 
singing by ; grape hurtled around us or rattled in 
an iron storm against the low protections of rails, 
and round shot ploughed up the ground before 

*One hundred and fifty guus were employed by General Lee in 
this cannonade. 



176 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

and behind ns. The men needed no caution to 
hug the ground closely. All lay motionless, 
heads to the front and faces to the ground. 
Though most of the shells went over us, occasion- 
ally a man would be struck. The wounded men 
invariably received their injuries without outcry, 
and lay and bled quietly in their places. They 
understood that for their comrades to attempt to 
remove them would be almost certain death, and 
waited patiently till the close of the fight should 
allow them to be cared for. The general and 
his staff alone stood erect or passed up and down 
the lines, and kept a close watch to the front for 
the first indication of the expected charge. Of 
course our batteries were not silent. They fired 
rapidly and well, but the enemy seemed to fire 
two guns to our one. Suddenly with a loud 
explosion a caisson of a battery just on our left 
blew up, struck by a solid shot. The smoke 
rolled up in a tall column, from under which the 
frightened horses, one or two minus a leg, dashed 
wildly to the rear. The rebels on the crest 
cheered to the sound, and poured in their shot 
still faster. Ten minutes later a whole battery 
seemed to blow up on our right. For a moment 
there was a scene of great confusion around it ; 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 177 

but a fresh battery dashed up in its place, and our 
fire re-opened with fresh vigor from the spot. A 
minute afterwards a rebel caisson opposite us 
exploded, and it was our turn to cheer. 

About four o'clock, the shout, "There they 
come" from our watchful general, brought every 
man's arms into his hands, and many a man's 
heart to his mouth. Two long and heavy lines 
came over the opposite ridge and advanced upon 
us. Down they came to about half the distance 
between our lines and their batteries, when our 
Thirteenth and Fourteenth regiments were 
ordered up, and rose in a close and steady line. 
At the sight the rebel column seemed to halt for 
an instant, then turned at a right angle and 
marched across the front of our brigade, then 
turning again at a right angle, came in on the 
charge, a few rods to the right of our brigade. 
The troops holding the lines there met the rebels 
with a line of fire; but the gray masses still 
came on, with unearthly yells, led by an officer 
on horseback who rode back and forth waving a 
red battle flag and cheering on his men. They 
had nearly reached the Union bayonets, and it 
began to be a question how lines of battle but 
two men deep could stand the onset of a massed 



178 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

column, when a new and unlooked for arrange- 
ment changed the appearance of things. The 
point of attack had no sooner become evident, 
than General Stannard ordered forward the Thir- 
teenth and Sixteenth regiments to take the enemy 
on the flank. The Vermonters marched a few 
rods to the right, and then, changing front, swung 
out at right angles to the main line, close upon the 
flank of the charging column, and opened fire. 
This was more than the rebels had counted on. 
They began to break and scatter from the rear in 
less than five minutes, and in ten more it was an 
utter rout. A portion made their way back to 
their own side; but fully two-thirds, I should 
think, of their number, dropped their arms and 
came in as prisoners. Of course they suffered 
terribly in killed and wounded. The Fourteenth 
had kept up a constant fire upon them, and aline 
of dead bodies marked their line of march across 
its front, while where their column came in on 
the charge their dead literally strewed the 
ground. 

It was a savage onset and a glorious repulse; 
but it did not end the fight on the left centre. 
Veazey and Randall and their men were occupied 
with the agreeable duty of receiving colonels' 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 179 

and majors' swords, when the order came to 
"about face" and meet another charge. A body 
of the enemy, evidently the supporting body of the 
main rebel column, was coming down to the left 
of us, apparently aiming at the position of the 
Fourteenth. The same mode of treatment was 
applied to their case, with the happiest result. 
The Fourteenth met them with a hot fire in 
front, and Colonel Veazey with the Sixteenth, 
hurrying back on the double quick, took them 
on the flank and bagged about a brigade of them. 

The Sixteenth took in this charge the colors of 
the Second Florida — a beautiful silk flag inscribed 
with "Williamsburg" and "Seven Pines" — the 
colors of the Eighth Virginia, and the battle flag 
of another regiment, which was foolishly thrown 
away by the sergeant to whom it was given to 
carry, who pitched it into the bushes, declaring 
that he could not fight with that flag in his hands. 

With these repulses of the enemy the big fight 
in effect closed. There was some skirmishing on 
our left, but no more hard fighting. At dark I 
was sent out with a detail of men, and stationed a 
picket line across the front of our brigade, and at 
9 o'clock our Vermont regiments were relieved 
from their position in the front line and allowed 



180 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

to find rest and comparative relief from care a 
little distance in the rear. 

I cannot give the loss of the brigade, as the list 
of casualties has not yet been prepared. It can- 
not be much less than 300 killed and wounded.* 
The list of missing will be small. I did not at 
any time see a man of the brigade making for the 
rear. 

The length of this hurried letter compels me to 
leave undescribed many an interesting incident 
of the fight, some of which I may perhaps de- 
scribe in a future letter. One or two, however, 
must not be passed over. 

Gen. Hancock was shot from his horse while 
he was talking to Gen. Stannard. 1 helped the 
latter to bandage Hancock's wound and his blood 
stained my hands. I might say stains my hands, 
for there has been no water to wash with, and not 
much to drink, where we have been on this field. 

During the last sharp shower of grape and 
shell, with which the eneim- strove to cover their 
retreat, Gen. Stannard was wounded in the right 

* The official reports of the loss of the brigade showed 46 killed ; 
240 wounded ; and 56 missing— total 342. The missing proved to be 
almost wholly men who had fallen out on the march to the battle- 
field, and came in before the brigade left the field. Of the wounded 
19 died of their wounds. 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 181 

leg by a shrapnel ball, which passed down for 
three inches into the muscle of the thigh. The 
wound was very painful until a surgeon came 
and removed the ball, but the general refused to 
leave the field, though urged to go by Gen. 
Doubleday He kept up till the regiments had 
marched back and till the wounded had been 
removed and then sank fainting on the ground 
and was taken to the rear. 

He was about the coolest man I saw on the 
field, exposing himself in a way that would 
have been rashness, were it not for the need he 
felt of animating his men by his example. He 
was a constant mark for the enemy's sharp- 
shooters, but nothing daunted or disconcerted 
him. To his presence of mind and timely orders 
is largely due the glorious success of yesterday. 
The general is proud of his troops and they of 
him ; and Vermont may well be proud of both. 

The brigade, or the three regiments engaged, is 
still on the battlefield. We have no tents, no 
fires and nothing to cook if we had. The men 
stand or sit in knots near their stacked arms, 
worn, hungry and battlestained ; but a better 
feeling body of men one does not often see. The 
big battle is over; and every man is glad to have 
had a part in it. Yours, B. 



182 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

XXXI. 

Additional Details op Gettysburg — Close 
of the Service of the Brigade. 

Camp of the Twelfth Vermont, 
Brattleboro, Vt., July 14, 1863. 

Dear Free Press: 

If I recollect aright, my last letter, from the 
battle-field of Gettysburg, contained an intima- 
tion that in a subsequent epistle I might attempt 
to set down some additional incidents of the great 
battle. I take the first opportunity to fulfill the 
promise — finding it only here, ten days after the 
fight and many hundred miles from the field. 
As hitherto, I write only of what passed under 
my own eye, leaving to others the description of 
the battle as a whole. 

As some of the army correspondents have given 
more or less erroneous accounts of the wounding 
of General Hancock, I will describe it as it 
happened. Just after General Stannard had 
ordered the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Vermont 
regiments out on Pickett's flank, General Han- 
cock, followed by a single mounted orderly, rode 
down to speak to General Stannard. Lieutenant 
George W. Hooker and myself were standing 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 183 

near the general's side. The din of artillery and 
musketry was deafening at the time, and I did 
not hear the words that passed between the two gen- 
erals. But my eyes were upon Hancock's strik- 
ing figure —I thought him the most splendid 
looking man I ever saw on horseback, and mag- 
nificent in the flush and excitement of battle — 
when he uttered an exclamation and I saw that 
he was reeling in his saddle. 

Hooker and I with a common impulse sprang 
toward him, and caught him as he toppled from 
his horse into our outstretched arms. General 
Stannard bent over him as we laid him upon the 
ground, and opening his clothing where he indi- 
cated by a movement of his hand that he was 
hurt, a ragged hole, an inch or more in diameter, 
from which the blood was pouring profusely, was 
disclosed in the upper part and on the inside of 
his thigh. He was naturally in some alarm for 
his life. "Don't let me bleed to death," he said, 
"Get something around it quick." Stannard 
had whipped out his handkerchief, and as I 
helped to pass it around General Hancock's leg, 
I saw that the blood, being of dark color and not 
coming in jets, could not be from an artery, and 
I said to him: "This is not arterial blood, Gen- 



184 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

eral; you will not bleed to death." From my use 
of the surgical term he took me for a surgeon, 
and replied, with a sigh of relief: "That's good; 
thank you for that, Doctor." We tightened the 
ligature by twisting it with the barrel of a pistol, 
and soon stopped the flow of blood. Major 
Mitchell of Hancock's staff rode up as we were 
at work over the general, and uttering an excla- 
mation of pain as he saw the condition of his 
chief, turned and darted away after a surgeon. 
One came in fifteen minutes, and removing the 
handkerchief thrust his forefinger to the knuckle 
into the wound and brought out from it an iron 
nail bent double. "This is what hit you, Gen- 
eral," he said, holding up the nail, "and you are 
not so badly hurt as you think."* 

♦Four months after the battle I met Hancock in Willard's Hotel 
in Washington. He remembered my face and I spent an hour talk- 
ing- over the battle with him. He told me that though his wound 
soon healed externally, it gave him immense pain till, after a num- 
ber of weeks, the surgeons opened it and probed it more thoroughly, 
when, eight inches from the opening, they found and extracted 
a minie ball and a round plug of wood. The explanation of this 
curious assortment of missiles to be taken from a single wound was 
a simple one. Hancock was nearly facing the enemy when hit. 
The ball passed first through the pommel of his McClellan saddle, 
took from it the nail and a round piece of wood the size of the ball, 
and carried both with it into his body. I may add that I pos- 
sess and prize a note in General Hancock's peculiar handwriting, 
addressed to myself, in which he says : "I have reason to remember 
you and Colonel Hooker on that field, for to you I am indebted for 
your kindly aid in assisting me from my horse when I was struck 
and about to fall to the ground, and that incident is of course indel- 
ibly impressed upon my memory." 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 185 

I was sent by General Stannard, about this 
time, with orders to the Vermont regiments then 
actively engaged in front, and did not return 
until the repulse of Pickett's division was com- 
plete. General Hancock was still lying where he 
fell. He had just sent a message to General 
Meade announcing the repulse of the great assault 
of the enemy, and was evidently more cheerful 
in mind than he had been half an hour before. I 
helped to lift him into an ambulance and saw 
him no more. 

I wish I could describe the great cannonade of 
Friday afternoon, but it was simply indescriba- 
ble. At one time, when it was at the hottest, I 
took out my watch and counted for a minute the 
shells that came so nearly in the line of my sight 
that I could see them like black spots in the air. 
I counted six such in sixty seconds. Most of 
these went just over our heads or I should not 
be writing this. 

The most destructive shot I noticed took effect 
in the Thirteenth regiment, as it was marching 
back to resume its place in line after the surrender 
of the greater portion of the main rebel column. 
I was hurrying past with an order, when a thud 
and cry of horror close behind me attracted my 



186 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

attention above the cracking of exploding shell. 
I turned to find a cruel gap in the column. Of a 
file of four men three had been prostrated by a 
shell, together with two officers marching by their 
side. The outer man was thrown to the ground 
but I believe not seriously injured ; the second 
was hit and killed by the passing missile ; the 
third was struck in the centre of the body and 
literally dismembered, one leg, bared of all but 
the shoe and stocking, being thrown several feet 
from the body. The fragments of the shell explod- 
ing at the same moment killed the sergeant- 
major of the regiment, Smith, to whom I had 
just spoken a cheering word, and threw senseless 
to the ground L,ieut. Col. Munson, who was 
walking at the moment at the sergeant-major's 
elbow. For a moment the men in the rear of the 
file which had thus been swept away halted and 
drew back aghast ; but discipline prevailed in 
another moment, and stepping over their mangled 
comrades, they closed up the gap and marched 
on. 

That I have made no mention of individual 
cases of good conduct on the field, is simply 
because such were altogether too numerous to 
mention. The troops of our brigade, being on 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 187 

their first battlefield, were not greatly counted 
on at the outset by our corps and division generals; 
and as we afterwards learned, strong supports 
were placed back of us to take our places when 
we should fall to the rear. But the supports 
were not needed. Our men endured that fearful 
cannonade as steadily as the oldest veteran regi- 
ment on the field. The}' rose into the cast-iron 
tornado that was sweeping over them, as promptly 
as if they had been on dress parade, and when 
their line moved, it was to the front instead of to 
the rear. They took the only two guns, so far as 
I can learn, that were taken from the enemy dur- 
ing the battle, and probably lessened Mr. L,ee's 
army, in killed and wounded and prisoners, at 
the rate of two or three men for every one of our 
own engaged. Our friends of the First brigade 
have been wont to call the Second brigade ' 'the 
picnic party. ' ' I am sorry they were not present 
on the spot to see the picnic party go in, Jul}' 2d 
and 3d. 

But one instance of unmanly want of fortitude 
attracted my notice among our Vermont troops. 
One young man, struck down by a shot which 
shattered one leg, as the regiment was hurrying 
forward, burst forth into loud entreaties to his 



188 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

comrades not to leave him, and rising on one 
knee tried to stop them by catching at the skirts 
of their coats as they passed him. They could 
not stay, of course, and it ma}^ have been the 
next day possibly before he was cared for. Such 
was the case with many of our wounded. The 
rule which forbids the rank and file leaving the 
ranks to attend to the wounded, hard as it seems, 
is one of necessity, and if more rigidly enforced 
in all our battles would have saved a hundred 
lives for every one lost by it. 

I was not at Gen. Stannard'sside when he was 
wounded, having been sent by him a little before 
with an order to Lieut. Col. Rose, commanding 
the detachment of the Fourteenth Vermont which 
supported the Sixteenth in its charge on Wilcox's 
brigade. The men of the battalion had just been 
ordered to cease firing, when I reached their 
line, the enemy in their immediate front having 
thrown down their arms. One or two men, in their 
excitement, paid no heed to the order and kept on 
firing till fairly collared by Major Hall. 

The risks of battle were, I think, more appar- 
ent to me while I was going to and fro on this 
errand, than at any other time; for the rebel bat- 
teries had opened afresh to cover Wilcox's retreat, 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 189 

and I had to cross two places which, owing to 
the conformation of the ground, were receiving 
especial attention from them. The ground at 
these points was being literally swept by grape, 
and ploughed into long furrows by shell, and it 
did not look as if a man crossing them had much 
chance for his life; but I was fortunate enough 
to get down and back without being hit ; and a 
spent ball which struck a pistol-cartridge box on 
my side and doubled down a Smith & Wesson 
cartridge without exploding it, was the only 
hostile missile that touched me, during the 
battle. 

After Stannard was taken to the rear Colonel 
Randall assumed command of the brigade, which 
remained on the field, with the corps, for three 
days after the battle, while the old brigade with 
the Sixth corps, which had been held in reserve, 
pushed after Lee's retreating army. 

I rode over the ground on Sunday, from right 
to left; but can give but little space to the horrors 
of the battle-field. I have seen nothing with 
which to compare them, except Brady's photo- 
graphic views of the field of Antietam — and 
there are in them no evidences of carnage at all 
equalling what I saw in twenty places on the 



190 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

field of Gettysburg. In the open ground in front 
of our lines on the centre and left, multitudes of 
the dead of both armies still lay unburied, though 
strong burial parties had been at work for twen- 
ty-four hours. They had died from almost every 
conceivable form of mutilation and shot-wound. 
Most of them lay on their backs, with clothes 
commonly thrown open in front, perhaps by the 
man himself in his dying agony, or by some 
human jackal searching for money on the corpse, 
and breast and stomach often exposed. The 
faces, as a general rule, had turned black — not a 
purplish discoloration, such as I had imagined in 
reading of the "blackened corpses" so often men- 
tioned in descriptions of battle-grounds, but a 
deep bluish black, giving to a corpse with black 
hair the appearance of a negro, and to one with 
light or red hair and whiskers a strange and 
revolting aspect. In the woods on our right, 
where the long musketry fight of Friday forenoon 
raged, I found the rebel dead (our own having 
been mostly buried) literally covering the ground. 
In a circle of fifty feet radius as near as I could 
estimate, I counted forty-seven dead rebels. The 
number of the enemy's dead in two acres of that 
oak grove, was estimated at 2,000, and I cannot 



BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 191 

say that I think it exaggerated. On the knoll 
just on the right of the position of our brigade, 
occupied successively by two of our batteries on 
Friday, I counted the dead bodies of twenty-nine 
horses. As late as Sunday noon, wounded men 
were still being brought into the field hospitals, 
some of whom had lain on the field since Thurs- 
day. 

I could relate other scenes and incidents of the 
battle, as noteworthy as those I have mentioned, 
but time and space are failing me. 

On Sunday night, after midnight, as I lay 
asleep, face up to the sky, on the field, a man 
shook me by the shoulder. It was an orderly 
with a led horse, who came with a message from 
General Stannard, directing me to join him at 
the farm house several miles away to which he 
had been carried. The night was pitch dark, 
and how we made out to thread the lines of sleep- 
ing soldiers and find our way to the house, I can- 
not understand; but we did it before daylight. 
Next day I took him, in an ambulance, to West- 
minster, a twenty-seven mile ride, and we spent 
that night in a freight car, one of a train of fifty 
or more cars, which were filled with wounded 
officers. Most of them were wholly unattended 



192 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 

and groaned the night away on the bare floors. 
Of course this was the result of no intentional 
neglect; but the number of wounded, exceeding 
twenty thousand, swamped all ordinary means of 
relief. I left the general in Baltimore, while I 
went to Washington to obtain transportation for 
him to Vermont, whither I accompanied him a 
little later. One of the first men I met at the 
War Department was Brig. Gen. Carl Schurz. 
He lectured in Burlington, as some will remem- 
ber, just before this "great unpleasantness" 
began, and having seen something of the civil 
war of the Swiss Cantons before he came to 
America, he ventured the prediction that while 
there was sure to be war between the North and 
South, with us as with the Swiss one battle 
would settle the dispute and there would not be 
much bloodshed. I reminded him of his proph- 
ecy, and he said he had changed his mind about 
our war, since then. But enough of this gossip. 
The Second Vermont brigade is disbanded. 
The Twelfth regiment, having remained on ardu- 
ous duty in the Army of the Potomac a week 
beyond the utmost limit of its time — for which it 
received the thanks of General Newton, com- 
manding the First corps, in a highly complimen- 



FAREWELL TO THE ARMY. 193 

tary order — took its leave with the hearty good- 
will of all with whom it has been associated, 
and has been mustered out and ceased to exist 
as a military body. The Thirteenth has also 
arrived here covered with dust and laurels, and 
in a few days will be no more as a regiment, 
Two weeks more will see the other regiments on 
their way home. 

The service of the brigade has not been what 
most of us expected, for we counted on active 
campaigns in the field, and hoped to be in at the 
death of the rebellion. But if less glorious than 
that of some, the duty which has mainly occupied 
us in the defence of Washington has been hon- 
orable, and more laborious than the average. And 
though not permitted to see within our term the 
close of this great war, we have been allowed to 
have a hand in the greatest battle that has been 
fought in it, and can go to our homes, feeling that 
with the glorious successes in the West and the 
opening of the Mississippi, the back-bone of the 
rebellion is indeed broken. 

And now with prayers for the speedy triumph 
of the Good Cause, in the service of which it is 
honor enough to have had even a small share; 
with heartiest good wishes for his comrades in 



104 FAREWELL TO THE ARMY. 

arms, for many of whom he has formed friend- 
ships which will be life-long; and with kindest 
regard for the gentle readers who have received 
with such kind interest his hasty and unstudied 
sketches, your correspondent brings these letters 
to a close, and takes his leave of camps and army 
correspondence . 

Yours, B. 



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